[lit-ideas] Re: Language, Justice and Social Practices
- From: Walter Okshevsky <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 19 Sep 2005 11:39:49 -0230 (NDT)
On Fri, 16 Sep 2005, Robert Paul wrote:
snip
>
> If people, or perhaps other sentient beings?let the scope be as wide as
> you like?did not behave and feel in certain ways, there would be no such
> thing as 'anger' over and above that; and so with the others.
snip
W: Not sure about that. You posit the existence of certain behaviors and
feelings as somehow possessing independence and priority with respect to
language. I wonder if a person could feel, for example, indignant without
understanding at least to some extent the linguistic term/concept
"justice." I think Charles Taylor gives this
example for a similar view on the constitutive rather than simply
representational functions of language. Similarly, is there anything in
Aristiotle's ethics that deals with our modern conception of morality,
and, if not, could he have ever experienced or deliberated upon a moral
issue or problem?
> This is extremely compressed, but I'm trying to avoid the kinds of
> muddle that Plato creates in the so-called Socratic dialogues, in which
> Socrates asks for an account of justice, piety, knowledge, e.g., which
> gives their essential features, features that are unique in each case.
> Yet when his interlocutors propose various instances of, say, justice,
> Socrates never accepts them, always being able to show that there are
> exceptions which make them inadequate as _definitions_; as Wittgenstein
> says in the Blue Book, 'When Socrates asks?"what is knowledge?" he does
> not even regard it as a _preliminary_ answer to enumerate cases of
> knowledge.' I think that when we say we 'know what justice is' we mean
> that we can pick out acts and judgments which we think are just; and we
> do this without having a knock-down, drag-out definition of what justice
> is, essentially. We can easily give examples of fair and unfair
> practices, without believing that fairness itself is somehow an
> independently existing 'thing.'
>
W: "Independently existing thing" is deliciously ambiguous. Insofar as
justice requires impartiality of judgment, and requires certain other
conditions of symmetry and reciprocity (i.e. Habermas), it can be
legitimately said to be independent of individual and individuals'
judgements. Justice, moral rightness may necessarily be epistemic - i.e.,
we can't get beyond warranted assertability under ideal conditions of
discourse - but that doesn't exclude the possibility for independence as
objectivity and impartiality of judgment and deliberation. Social
practices possess a (normative) reality that transcends individuals' and
groups' interpretationa and judgments.
> Enough for now.
>
W: OK. Are you stil thinking about Kant on maxims, purposes, etc.?
Cheers,
Walter
Memorial U
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