Postmodern Condition as Utopia

Postmodern Condition as Utopia

          ---------A Postmodern Political Theory

By Zhang Ming

 

I. Description of Lyotard's postmodern condition:

There is no metanarrative as the origin of legitimacy. What we have is just small games. Then we face the skeptical challenge: there is no morally wrong or right in postmodern condition. To respond this, Nuyen draws out an postmodern ethics from Lyotard's works.

 

II. Nuyen's two levels of ethics: micro ethics and macro ethics.

Micro ethics applies to particular small games. In postmodern condition, instead of metanarratives we have the little games, the small discourses, each with its own rules. "To play a game entails to obey the rules of the game"(p414). "The rules are binding but the real source of normativity, of the force of obligation, lies in the agent himself or herself who chooses to play a certain game, thus chooses to play by the very rules that define the game"(p414).

The macro ethics applies to the relationship between different games. I see issues on this level as the political issues. On this level, there two kinds of terrorism arise.

 

III. Lyotard's recognization of two kinds of terrorism:

The terrorism of violence and the white terrorism of totality. The former one is visible, the later one is invisible. The most significant contribution of Lyotard is that he realized and recognized the injustice of totalization. So he says that "the question of presenting the unpresentable is the only one worthy of what is at stake in life and thought in the coming century" and calls for us "to wage a war on totality" and to be "witnesses to the unpresentable". Here the ethical problem arises. They are how to avoid totalization and how to present the unpresentable.

Nuyen thinks there are two strategies to respond the ethical demand. But before go into details about the two strategies, I will first do my reconstruction of Lyotard's postmodern condition the key of which is the redefinition of the netanarrative.

 

IV. Nuyen's two strategies deal with the two kinds of terrorism:

Political strategy and reflective strategy. Political strategy deals with the violent terrorism. The reflective strategy deal with the wrongs of differend, that of totalization.

 

V. Reconstruct Lyotard's postmodern condition as an ideal notion of free society and redefine the metanarrative as the totalization itself:

The key of the reconstruction is the reinterpretation of the concept of metanarrative. In Lyotard's mind, it seems like to be a kind of discourse ever existing in the history, that is, in the modern history. However, I would rather understand it as an illusion of legitimate discourse. The death of metanaarative, as claimed by Lyotard, means, in my mind, the nonexistence of metanarrative. There is no such kind of metanaarative as legitimacy. The incredulity toward metanarratives finally turn out to find the truth of history that the so called metanarrative is just the form of totalization of one kind of discourse, where differend is unavoidable. The attempt to be metanarrative is the ambition of totalization. Metanarrative is the justification of totalization. Therefore, I consider all metanarratives in history as products of totalization. That is to say, the metanarrative is just a beautiful coat for totalization. Totalization operates in the name of metanarrative. However, in fact, it is a process of totalization, a process of differendd, a process of causing the wrongs, a history of suffering of victims of differendd.

No metanarrative means no totalization. As long as there is totalization, we will never be in postmodern condition. Therefore I consider the postmodern condition as an ideal notion of free society. Just on this point, I have the same claim with Lyotard and Nuyen, that the war against totality is endless.

 

Further review of the two kinds of terrorism: sharing the same structure of terrorism.

So the rejection of violent terrorism also applies to the rejection of totalization.

 

VI. Reflection on the role of government and Political solution according to the two strategies

Since I see issues on the macro level as political issue, the political problem need a political solution.

The role of government to the violent terrorism:

The role of government to the white terrorism of totality: old government involved in totalization.

Pure notion of government from postmodern condition

We need a government which could not only rule out the violent terrorism but also prevent the totalization.

 

VII. Political missions before us

The mission set by Lyotard and Nuyen: to fight against the totalization and present the unpresentable individually.

The mission set according to my understanding of pure notion of government:

To fight against the old form of government to build up a new kind of government which could fight against the totalization and present the unpresentable.

 

VIII. Other implication of my reconstruction of postmodern condition and the redefinition of metanarrative

Review and evaluation of theories and events in history

 

 

Postmodern political philosophy based on Lyotard's Theory of just gaming

Postmodern political philosophy based on Lyotard's Theory of just gaming
Postmodernism and Utopia

Postmodern ethics
Micro ethics
Macro ethics
Political demand

What I want to do is to redefine or reposition the postmodernism condition described by Lyotard and to extend Nuyan's Postmodern ethics to the political area. Postmodernism flowers almost in any intellectual field and in most field they are profoundly productive. However, in the political theory postmodernism inserted few fingers. What People so called postmodernism politicians did were just some raise some separate criticisms that considered as the odd noise upon traditional political theories and government policies and actions. It seems like they are content with such kind of position in political area. But in fact, they can do more and what Lyotard said means more than what we know now. As Nuyan drew out a coherent theory of postmodern ethics, I will try to expend it to the political area following the same route.

One person can plays several kinds of games at the same time. There is no metanarratives that could be appealed to for legitimization when different games are in conflicts.
Why do we need a government? If the society is naturally well organized, we will not need to appeal to the government for just judgement. The natural good society is impossible because of the fact that some individual or group want to override others. In the situation no one's life, freedom and property is under protection. We can call the kind of action terrorism.
According to the postmodern ethic of Lyotard, we can recognize two kinds of terrorism. The first one is the direct terrorism, like murder, ritual killing, bomb, all that directly threaten person's life. Another one is indirect terrorism, which is what Lyotard called white terrorism. White terrorism originates from the differend, the negative effect of postmodern condition. It presents in the form of totalization which means one kind of game becomes superior over other games.

To avoid these kind of terrorism, we need a political solution. The political solution must be directed by the rules of metagame, that is, the rules of just gaming articulated by Lyotard. What is the nature of postmodern condition? Being free. Postmodern condition, in my mind, is actually the ideal free society for human beings. The destructive elements of the ideal, or the enemies of the free society are the two kinds of terrorism, one is visible and another invisible. These two kind of terrorism is consistent with the free society and would be ruled out by the rules of just gaming. The rules of just gaming is the ethical demands in a postmodern society.

But how to implement the rules of just gaming. The government. Government is built up to ensure the rules of just gaming are followed by all game players and prevent the society or all other kinds of games from the destruction of the two kinds of terrorism. Here we can see that the government derives from the existence terrorism. The nature of terrorism is violence. To fight against violence, the government has also need the violence, that is, the power. This is the insight of law or authority that Derrida has in the force of the law. Therefore, he say that in the foundation moment the power is neither just nor unjust. But in the postmodern condition, the government is based on the rules of just gaming.

The obligation of government is to rule out the two kinds of terrorism. In fact, the first one is easy to be recognized and to be ruled out. But the second one is hard to recognize and to fight against. The reason is that the totalization is often connected with the government. They get the legitimate coat by connecting closely with the government. This is the worst situation. In this situation, the role of government is suspicious. In fact, in this situation, the authority of government has lost her legitimacy. The situation is just what Foucualt described in his works, that the mixture of power and truth.

So, according to the postmodern ethics, we need a new kind of government. This kind of government is at the stake of protect all game player from not only from the violent terrorism, but also from the white terrorism, namely, the totalization where the old government is involved in. To be a postmodern government, she must keep herself neutral during all kinds of games. What is the proper being neutral for the government? According to the postmodern ethics, it should not only avoid involvement in the process of totalization, but also fight against any intentional or unintentional tendency to totalization, and erect all wrongs caused by the deferends. In Lyotard's words, the government should does her best to present the unpresentable, to free the unpresentable. Here, I point out that the multiplicity is the phenomenon originates from the free society without diferrend, rather than the value of the society that is set as value superior over others.

However, although Lyotard recognized the postmodern condition, but in fact we are not in the postmodern condition. Because the postmodern condition is actually an ideal of society like the original position of Rawls or the state of nature of Locke. The society we are living in is the society full of diferrend. What is the worst, we are living in a society where the government is still involved in the process of totalization. So, to have a government that could struggle against the the white terrorism of totalization, we first need to fight against the the government involved in the process of totalization. That is to say, now we still have to fight for ourselves in two war field at the same time, one is to fight against the totalization itself to present the presentable, the other is to fight against
the government involved in the process of totalization to build up a postmodern government that see preventing totalization as her sake.

Here I described a new kind of government based on the postmodern ethics drawn out by Nuyen form Lyorad's theory. But the postmodern political theory need to be justified more concretely. The biggest problem that I may have is the same one that Lyotard and Nuyen have to face, that is, since in postmodern condition, there is no narrative that could be justified to be superior over other games, then how could we justify the rule of just gaming is not such kind of metanarratives? In fact, I am inclined to admit that the rules of game is a kind of metanarrative, and the only one that could be justified in postmodern condition.

Another problem is that how to see the role of government during different games. Is it a kind of game? A metagame? Actually, Lyotard can not explain the compacted relation between different games. When he talks about games, he seems to see them as independent games to each other. However, in fact, they are closely woven together. For example, the economic game is almost connected with all other kinds of game. The relation between political game and other games is more complex. I am inclined to see the political game as the metagame the role of which is to ensure the fair condition for all other games. In this sense political game is the condition for the possibilities of other games. In this sense, I share the view of political theory that Rawls holds in his political liberalism.

From the postmodern point of view, we can give some new reviews about Marxism and Utilitarianism. For Marxism, the positive aspect is that it presents the unpresentable, namely, the worker class exploited by capitalists and fights against the totalization of capitalism. The negative aspect is that Marxism fell into totalization itself in its solution of the problems. I think that it find the right problem but it did not find the proper way to solve it. In its collective solution, individuals become the unpresentable. The mass become the unpresentable and the government become the totalization itself.

Utilitarianism actually is friendly with socialism. In the age of Bentham and Mill, the majority of the society is the poor. When they advocated to reform the society they were actually presenting the poor who were unpresentable in that age. But after the World War II, the majority of western society have a comfortable life. According to the principle of utility, it is unclear whether the minor poor should be improved by the sacrifice of common good. This implies that one theory may be coherent with the postmodern political demand but then it may become the opposition of the demand in the time. So the the view of postmodern political theory also implies a historical dimension at the principles of justice. I think this feature is consistent with the tamper of Postmodernism. In this sense, we may imagine that one day the principles of justice given by Rawls will become the opposition of the demand, that is, to present the unpresentable. Therefore, the mission of postmodernism is an endless task. It holds an ideal, that is the postmodern society, but in fact we will always be on the way getting close to the ideal. Of course, this ideal is an one different from the communist society, which is the extreme form of totalization.

Postmodern Political Theory

Postmodern Political Theory

Just presenting the unpresentable by political sublime is not enough, we also need to try best to prevent the tendency of totalization or differend, which is the origin of wrongs. This is why I claim that we need a political solution by building up a new kind of government. The role of government is crucial in the fight against totalization.

In history or reality, the role of government is complicated and suspicious because they may be involved in the process of totalization. What I am going to do is to put forth a pure notion of government, the postmodern government. It derives from the reconstruction of Lyotard's postmodern condition. In his view, postmodern condition is a period of history, namely the period after world war II. I will try to reconstruct it as an ideal notion of free society beyond history, from which point we may get a new dimension to review the history, or theories and events in history.

The key of the reconstruction is the reinterpretation of the concept of metanarrative. In Lyotard's mind, it seems like to be a kind of discourse ever existing in the history, that is, in the modern history. However, I would rather understand it as an illusion of legitimate discourse. The death of metanaarative, as claimed by Lyotard, means, in my mind, the nonexistence of metanarrative. There is no such kind of metanaarative as legitimacy. The incredulity toward metanarratives finally turn out to find the truth of history, the so called metanarrative is just the form of totalization of one kind of discourse, where differendd is unavoidable. Appealing to metanarrative means the attempt to be metanarrative, the ambition of totalization. Metanarrative is the justification of totalization. Therefore, I consider all metanarratives in history as products of totalization. That is to say, the metanarrative is just a beautiful coat for totalization. Totalization operates in the name of metanarrative. However, in fact, it is a process of totalization, a process of differendd, a process of causing the wrongs, a history of suffering of victims of differendd.

Just from the postmodern condition, an ideal conception of free society, in my mind, we are able to realize and recognize the wrongs of differendd, the terror of totality, and further the suffering of victims of differendd. Just at this point, as Nuyen drew out, we meet the postmodern ethical demand: how to avoid the wrongs of differ end, and how to present the unpresentable? To answer the ethical problem, Nuyen asserts that there are two kinds of strategies that can be drawn out from Lyotard's theory. He calls them political strategy and reflective strategy, respectively.

But before go further into the two strategy, I want to sketch out an outline of the whole scheme of what Nuyen calls postmodern ethics in my terms. In his postmodern ethics, there are two levels of ethics, one I call micro ethics, the other I call macro ethics. The micro ethic is based on the internal rules of small language games. From this point of view, we can develop a kind of normative theory of different occupation field. The macro ethics is concerned with the relationship between different games. It is based on the rules of just gaming, which aims at resolving the conflicts between different games. My focus would be mainly on the macro level. The two kinds of strategies answering the ethical demand is positioned on the macro level.

On the macro level, the postmodern ethics is to deal with two kinds of problem. One is the direct terrorism, like murder etc. The other is the wrongs of differendd, namely, what Lyotard calls the white terrorism of totality. The political strategy is used to deal with the problem of the direct terrorism. In fact, it is easy to recognize the direct terrorism but not easy to rule it out by postmodernism. So the key is to answer why the terroism should be ruled out according to postmodern ethics. The answer is that it destroys other player's right to play their own games. Everyone has the right and freedom to play any game he or she like to do as long as it does not destroy other's right and freedom to play their own games. The basis is the notion of free agent.

Concerning this issue, Nuyen think that the sole negative rule is not sufficient to rule out the terroism, so he adds a positive component that advocates to maximize the multiplicity of game playing and points out that the positive component works as a regulative rule in Kantian sense, not a determinate rule. But i think it is not necessary to add the positive aspect. It is inconsistent with the postmodern ethics and will bring out some other problems. In my view, the multiplicity is the natural consequence of free game playing, rather not the cause or independent value of game playing. We do not need to assume that the multiplicity is good and therefore it should be maximized. Certainly, the terrorism could be ruled out by it , but it still work to demand us to maximize the multiplicity even in cases not concerning terrorism. So the work left for me is to demonstrate the negative rule is sufficient to rule out the terrorism without adding a demand of maximizing the game playing.

The reflective strategy is used to deal with the wrongs of differendd. The white terrorism of totality is a kind of indirect terrorism, therefore it is hard to realize and recognize ti. From the point of postmodern condition, we can note that when metanarrative arise, then there is totalization. Totalization works under the cover of metanarrative. Totalization means some kind of discourse claim that it is superior to other discourses. Therefore, according to the existing grant narrative, other discourses become unpresentable. However, being unpresentable does not mean they do not exist. Lyotard adapts Kant's esthetic sublime to the political area. The esthetic sublime is an attempt to present the unpresentable when the faculty of imagination is demanded by the faculty of reason to present the object beyond its concept. When the imagination successfully creates new metaphors, symbols etc to present the unpresentable, people feel a kind of pleasure from the pain of imagination. it is the feeling of sublime. Lyotard applies it to the political area, Nuyen calls it political sublime, the presentation of wrongs of differendd.

Depriving other's right to play theory own games is amorally unjustifiable, or everyone has the absolute right to play their own games without intervene. This may be the same basis for rejecting the terrorism and totalization. Because they have the same structure that destroys individual's right of freedom to play their own games. I think this basis is valid enough to rule out the direct terrorism and the white terrorism of totality. The real and most significant contribution of Lyotard's postmodernism is that it realized and recognized the injustice of totality, and successfully draw out the same structure with terrorism by identifying the wrongs of differendd, this is why Lyotard calls the totality the white terrorism, such strong words. Then we can understand why Lyotard asserts that "the question of presenting the unpresentable is the only one worthy of what is at stake in life and thought in the coming century". Nuyen identifies it as the postmodern ethical demand. to respond the ethical demand, Lyotard calls for us "to wage a war on totality" and to be "witnesses to the unpresentable." They are the two sides of one coin. To fight against the totality and to present the unpresentable must be carried out together.

But Lyotard and Nuyen said little about the role of government in the mission. This is what I want to do. But all what I will talk about government is based on the reconstruction of Lyotard's postmodernism and Nuyen's postmodern ethics mentioned above.

Feedback to Charlene

Feedback to Charlene

In my response, I will argue that there would not be difficulty to rule out claim for respect of conscience that leads one to harm others and interference from government would be necessary in situation where people are driven to act by such kind of conscience.

Simply speaking, in Kukathusian sense, the liberty of conscience is so important that it should be protected against all possible intervene and violation. To protect individual liberty of conscience, the first thing to deny should be the violation from other individuals. Hence, we have reason to affirm that individual have the right to fight against any violation committed upon his liberty of conscience. Therefore, when you refer to the ritual killing, individuals threatened by it have the right to fight against commitments of ritual killing. I think we have no reason to deny this point and could not regard such kind of action as illegitimate action violating these ritual killers' liberty of conscience. In this sense, the respect for liberty of conscience and the right to protect it for oneself seem to be the contents of natural law. The legitimacy of an action could merely be justified by the fact that it originates from free conscience itself and the illegitimacy of an action is only determined according to the fact that it violates other's liberty of conscience. Here there seems to be a aporia. But it is not. Just like the way Kant defend autonomy of human being and the legitimacy of law that originates from the self determination, here we have reason to say that it is reasonable that liberty of conscience should and only should be constrained by itself. Therefore, an action should be intervened legitimately even if it is driven by one's own free conscience when it is violating other's liberty of conscience.

In the former paragraph, I argued that it is legitimate for one to intervene another's action when it is threatening to him or herself. The following question is whether it is reasonable to extend the intervene to the power of government. As Charlene cited, "[the goal of public policy] is not to shape the culture of the polity, or to uphold the dignity of the individual, or to rescue minority groups from their marginalized status in society. The liberal state is indifferent to these matters. Its only concern is to preserve the order within which such groups and individuals exist." (p. 250) why is it necessary for government to preserve the order? To preserve the order, in Kukathusian sense, is to protect individual's liberty of conscience. This is the reason why government exists. If there is no violation against liberty of conscience in society, the existence of government would not be necessary, in Kukathusian sense. No government is the ideal of minimal state. However, no intervene against liberty of conscience is impossible, so the existence of government is necessary, but the power should be limited as much as it should be. The basic goal for government is to protect people's liberty of conscience. The way to do this is to intervene any violation against liberty of conscience. The case of ritual killing is obviously in the list that government could legitimately intervene. It is based on the same basis with the individual intervene.

This is a defense for Kukathus based on his premise. But this does not mean I accept his basic standpoint. Moreover, for my limited knowledge about Kukathus' theory and the lack of your complete argument, I am not sure if my comments is proper for you argument. But the only thing I expect is that they could be useful for you to further your argument.

Feedback to Jacob

On this issue, here are just some questions, no comment I can offer.

May I understand the three criteria of model-saving you gave are reasons that an scientist should offer to stick to her current model when she meet contrary evidence? If so, then what I want to ask is whether it is also a kind of model-saving to modify some parts of her model to endorse the contrary evidence that is for the unmodified model? In many case, we can ignore contrary evidence when it scarifies one or more of the three criteria, but when it does not, could we still consider such kind of modification mentioned above as the model-saving? If so, is it acceptable to add one criteria as follows: model-saving is heuristically proper if the contrary deviance could be embodied by the model through making some modifications of the model settings?
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Notes on Lyotard's Postmodern Ethics and the Normative Question

Notes on Lyotard's Postmodern Ethics and the Normative Question

This paper and the other paper "Lyotard's Postmodern Ethics" are very inspiring for me. They made me not only have a clearer understanding about Lyotard's theory but also gain a new way to respect postmodernism.

To most extent, I agree that the ethical reinterpretation offered by you are successful. I am very interested in the strategy that you use to interpret Lyotard, and further more, thanks to the two papers, I am planning to interpret Lyotard's theory in a more political direction in my second term paper. According to your interpretation, it seem to be possible to have a new way to understand Rawls' and Nozick's political theory from the point of view of Lyotard's postmodern ethics.

Here, I just submit few notes concerning what I thought of when I am reading the paper.

The death of metanarratives implies that no universal narrative could be morally justified and what exist there are just small discourses that are justifiable according to their own local rules. Therefore, any kind of narrative trying to be superior over others would be morally illegitimate.

Under this landscape, two levels of ethics could be drawn out. I call them macro ethic and micro ethic. On the micro level, ethics serves for particular small games. As you put forth, "to play a game entails to obey the rules of the game"(p414). And you ground it on the autonomous agent, "the real source of normatively, of the force of obligation, lies in the agent himself or herself who choose to play a certain game, thus choose to play by the very rules that define the game"(p414). Moreover, the rule of a particular game could not be changed, because the rule is public for all players in the game. So "for any one game player, the rules of the games, its ethics, are binding until such time as he or she together with all other game players decide to change them"(p415). On the micro level, if one does not like some kind of game, he or she can choose to withdraw freely. Therefore, skeptical attack have no threaten to the micro ethics. If one wants to be an absolute skeptic he will have to encounter the risk of the Shakespearean choice between to be or not to be, because as he or she exist he has been in some kind of game.

However, the most significant and meanwhile the most controversial part of Lyotard's postmodern ethics is the macro ethics. If I can say that the micro ethics deals with the relation between individual and particular games, then the macro ethics is dealing with relations during different games. On macro level, the ethical demand is to deal with the wrongs of deferends, that is, how to avoid the oppression of some by others. According to your interpretation, there are two strategies that can be drawn out from Lyotard's works. One is called as the political strategy and the other is called as the reflective strategy. The political strategy is used to deal with injustice of terrorism based on the notion that depriving other's right to play their own game is morally unjustified. Here I mainly endorse the negative component and maintain my suspicion on the positive component in your interpretation. The reflective strategy is used to deal with injustice of totalization based on the notion that no narrative could be morally justified superior over others. Therefore, the urgent demand for justice is to do our best to present the unpresentable. Finally, you arrive at the notion that "to be a game player is to be playing the game of game playing, hence to be committed to the rules of game playing, namely, the rules of just gaming. The reason why terrorism should be ruled out and totalization should be blamed because playing them breaks the rule of just gaming, the rule of meta-game.

What I am going to do is turn the focus on the role of government which was not mentioned in your paper. Before reading your paper, I was inclined to see Lyotard as an anarchist. After reading your first paper, I am going to consider Lyotard as a libertarian like Nozick. But now, I am going to think that to some extent Lyotard may endorse some of Rawls' basic statements. The first strategy, namely, political strategy, could defend for Nozick's minimal state when it meets the problem of toleration of terrorism. But according to your interpretation, I think Lyotard's theory does not stop here. Taking his political sublime, we can understand Rawls' difference principle as a witness of the least advantaged in the society. In contrast, Nozick's theory is lack of the consideration. In my second paper, I will try to argue for what I put forth here.

I am afraid that the note is full of misunderstandings about your papers. So please point them out, professor, as you find some.

Two kinds of distributive justice

Two kinds of distributive justice

In intellectual area, when we talk about the history of some subject, we usually derive it to the ancient Greece. However, when people try to do that about the issue of distributive justice, Fleischacker calls for stopping, because in fact the meaning of the term "distributive justice" has changed in the history. As he indicated in his A Short History of distributive Justice, the phrase "distributive justice" indeed comes originally from Aristotle, but "the notion [in modern sense] is little more than two centuries old"(SHDJ,2).

"Distributive justice" in its modern sense calls on the state to guarantee that property is distributed throughout society so that everyone is supplied with a certain level of material means. However, in it's original, Aristotelian sense, "distributive justice" referred to the principles ensuring that deserving people are rewarded in accordance to their merits, especially regarding their political status, and was not seen as relevant at all to property rights. In short, the ancient principle has to do with distribution according to merit while the modern principle demands a distribution independent of merit.

Debates about distributive justice in modern sense tend to center on the amount of means to be guaranteed and pm the degree to which state intervention is necessary for those means to be distributed. If the level of goods everyone ought to have is low enough, it may be that the market can guarantee an adequate distribution; if everyone ought to have an ample basket of welfare protections, the state may need to redistribute goods to correct for market imperfections; if what everyone ought to had is an equal share of all goods, private property and the market will probably have to be replaced altogether by a state system for distributing goods. Distributive justice is thus understood go be necessary for any justification of property rights, and such that it may even entail a rejection of private property.

However, desert is essentially tied to merit for Aristotle; it makes no sense, in his framework, to think anyone could deserve something merely because she needs it. It is essential, that is, not accidental, to Aristotle's concept of distributive justice that a notion of merit is at work- a notion by which people deserve something because of excellent character traits they have or excellent actions they have performed. It is equally essential to the modern notion of distributive justice that people deserve certain goods regardless of their character traits or anything they have done.

Even if many religions state advocate helps for the poor but in many case it is concerned with the virtue of the giver, not with the notion that the poor deserve these things offered to them. According to Fleischacker, it is in eighteenth century that the attitudes toward the poor begin to change greatly and the modern sense of distributive justice begin to formulate. This change attributes to works made by Rousseau, Smith, Kant and Babeuf. Rousseau has some profound insight into the nature of inequality. In his sense, human beings are directly responsible for almost all human misery. If society causes most human sufferings, we can infer that society should also be able to cure most human evils. This leads us to the premise for the modern concept of distributive justice, that is, "the belief that redistributing property so as to minimize or eradicate poverty is possible"(p58).

Then, Smith first drew widespread attention to the harm done by poverty to the poor's private lives. He recommends that wealth can be redistributed in at least three ways: "(1) by a direct transfer of property from the rich to the poor, (2) by taxing the rich at a higher rate than the poor, or (3) by using tax revenues, gathered from rich and poor alike, to provide public resources that will mostly benefit the poor"(p63). Smith's most significant contribution is the picture of the poor he dignified, which is essential to help bring about the modern notion of distributive justice, that the poor deserve certain kinds of aids. Once one does have such kind of belief, some sort of welfare state comes to seem morally necessary.

Kant, more clearly and explicitly than any of his predecessors, proclaims the equal worth of all human beings. Every human being, indeed every rational being, exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means. Every human being is of "absolute worth", hence of equal worth. At a fundamental level all people are equally worthy, equally deserving of a good life. Moreover, Kant construes human nature such that we have a set of potentials for fully free action that we can realize only if we live in favorable natural and social circumstances. This view has important consequences for distributive justice, for the development of people's potentials may require a large number of material goods and social institutions. So if the value of a person's life requires the development of his or her potential, then it may be necessary for society to provide the material circumstances for developing those potentials to everyone who would not otherwise have them. (p74).

It is Bebeuf, a leader of the french revolution, who first explicitly proclaims that justice requires the state to redistribute goods to the poor. But according to Fleischacker, even Babeuf does not seem to have used the phrase "distributive justice" in its modern sense. Only when John Rawls began developing his theory of justice in the 1950s and 1960s did philosophers and political theorists begin to take seriously the individual right to well being that Babeuf had proclaimed in 1796. This is what I will introduce next week.

SHDJ, A Short History of Distributive Justice, Samuel Fleischacker, Harvard University Press, 2004.