Download Theoretical foundation of Educational Administration and Policy

East China Normal University
Department of Educational Management
Workshop on
Practical Foundations of Educational Management & Educational Governance
Lecture 7 and 8
Public Reason:
The Practical Foundation of Educational Management to Governance (III)
A. The Possibility of Social Choice: From Rationality to Public Reason
1. Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate in economics in 1998, in his Nobel Prize Lecture
entitled The Possibility of Social Choice, defines social choice as “the choice ‘of
the people, by the people, for the people’.” (Sen, 2002, P. 66)
2. The impossibility of social choice: The conventional view in economics about social
choice has been dominated by the Arrow’s impossibility theorem. Kenneth Arrow,
another Nobel Laureate in economics in 1972, indicates that it is practically
impossible to arrive at a unanimous consensus on social-preference ordering
among a human aggregate in rational, autonomous and democratic fashion. (Arrow,
1950) Therefore, he stipulates that “If we exclude the possibility of interpersonal
comparisons of utility, then the only methods of passing from individual tastes to
social preferences which will be defined for a wide range of sets of individual
orderings are either imposed or dictatorial.” (1950, P. 342)
3. The possibility of social choice: In his Nobel Prize Lecture, Sen reviews his
career-long stance of taking issue with the Arrow impossible theorem. That is, he
asserts that social choice is possible.
He defines his enquiry of social choice in three related questions (Sen, 2002, P. 66)
a. “How can it be possible to arrive at cogent aggregative judgments about the
society (for example, about ‘social welfare,’ or ‘the public interest,’ or aggregate
poverty’), given the diversity of preferences, concerns, and predicaments of the
different individuals within the society?”
b. “How can we find any rational basis for making such aggregative judgment as
‘the society prefers this to that,’ or ‘the society should choose this over that,’ or
‘this is socially right’?
c. “Is reasonable social choice at all possible, especially since…there are ‘as
many preferences as there are people’?”
B. Distinction between Rational and Reasonable Persons
1. John Rawls’s distinction between reasonable persons and rational persons
a. “Persons are reasonable in one basic aspect when, among equals say, they
are ready to propose principles and standards as fair terms of cooperation and
to abide by them willingly, given the assurance that others will likewise do
so. ….The reasonable is an element of the idea of society as a system of fair
cooperation and that its fair terms be reasonable for all to accept is part of its
idea of reciprocity.” (1993, 49-50)
b. “The rational is, however, a distinct idea from the reasonable and applied to a
single, unified agent (either an individual or corporate person) with the powers
of judgment and deliberation in seeking ends and interests peculiarly its own.
The ration applies to how these ends and interests are adopted and affirmed,
as well as to how they are given priority. It also applies to the choice of means,
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in which case it is guided by such familiar principles as: to adopt the most
effective means to ends, or to select the most probable alternative, other things
equal.” (1993, p. 50) More specifically, “what rational agents lack is the
particular form of moral sensibility that underlies the desire to engage in fair
cooperation. …Rational agents approach being psychopathic when their
interests are solely in benefits to themselves.” (1993, p. 51) As in everyday
speech, we may characterize rational agents that “their proposal was perfectly
rational given their strong bargaining position, but it was nevertheless highly
unreasonable.” (1993, 48)
c. In light of Rawls’ distinction, practical reason can then be construed as reasons
that reasoning agents attributed to their actions. It goes beyond the principle of
t rationality and means-end calculation. It conforms to the principle of
reciprocity and fairness, which members of a given community mutually
accepted.
Accordingly, practical reason can be defined as human capacity to attribute
their actions to
i. The principle of rationality,
ii. The principle of reciprocity, and/or even
iii. The principle of fairness
2. Amartya Sen’s distinction between rationality and reason
a. From economics point of view, Amartya Sen has made a more specific
distinction between the rational person and reasonable persons. He underlines
that in mainstream economics, rational persons is “characterized by intelligent
pursuit of self-interest”. More specifically, “it has … been assumed that they
must also be the detached from others, so that they are completely unaffected
by the well-being or achievement of others.” (Sen, 2009, P. 188)
b. In his article entitled “Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioural
Foundations of Economic Theory”, (1977) he stipulates that human can
make choice and action not in accordance with the self-interest pursuant
rationality. He suggests that human may choice and act on the bases of
“sympathy” or “commitment”.
i. By sympathy, It “refers to one person’s welfare being affected by the
position of others’ (for example, a person can feel depressed at the sight of
misery of others)” (Sen, 2009, P. 188)
ii. By commitment, it is “concerned with breaking the tight link between
individual welfare and the choice of action”. That is doing what can be done
to remove the misery of others without considering one’s own
welfare, …”that is a clear departure from self-interest behavious.” (Sen,
2009, P. 188-89)
c. Furthermore, Sen underlines that “Adam Smith, the father of modern
economics…is often wrongly thought to be a proponent of the assumption of
the exclusive pursuit of self-interest, in the form of the so-called ‘economic
man’.” (Sen, 2009, P. 185) Sen points out that it is only in explaining “the
motivation for economic exchange in the market” that Smith underscored
human’s predisposition of self-interest pursuit. In fact, Smith has distinguished
clearly reasons other than egoistic self-interest pursuit in explaining human’s
choice and action, for example, sympathy, generosity and public spirit. (Sen,
2009, P. 185)
d. In contrast to narrow-minded self-interest pursuant rationality, Sen agrees with
Rawls that humans are capable of reasoning in wider context and with variety
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of criteria (not confine to egoistic self-interest), to scrutinize one’s thoughts and
action as objectively and impartially as possible, and ready to submit one’s
erroneous decision or act to stronger evidence and/or better arguments. In his
own words, he characterizes “reasonable persons as “capable of being
reasonable through being open-minded about welcoming information and
through reflecting on argument coming from different quarters, along with
undertaking interactive deliberations and debates on how the underlying issues
should be seen.” (Sen, 2009, P. 43)
3. Elinor Ostrom, Nobel Laureate in economics in 2009, also examines the behavioral
base of rational choice and collective action from a different methodological and
theoretical perspective.
a. In her presidential address, American Political Science Association, 1997,
entitled “A Behavioral Approach to the Rational Choice Theory of Collective
Action’” (2014/1997), Ostrom presents her evidences accumulated from
decades of laboratory experiments on game theory. And to up with the
conclusion that in social dilemmas, such as the prisoners’ dilemma, reasonable
persons may find the solution to escape from the loss-loss situation and arrive
at mutual beneficial solution.
b. Ostrom categorizes her theory as the second-generation models of rationality:
i. She indicates that in the first-generation model of rational choice, theorists
simply accept as given the fact that “individual are boundedly rational, they
do not calculate a complete set of strategies for every situation they face.”
It is because they cannot have obtained complete information on all
potential actions, all outcomes, and all strategies of their partners. (Strom,
2014, P. 136)
ii. Learnt heuristics: Ostrom underlines that “in field situations (such as
laboratory experiments), individuals tend to use heuristics─rules of thumb
─that they have learned over time regarding responses that tend to give
them good outcomes in particular kinds of situation.” (Ostrom, 2014, P. 136)
In short, individuals will reason out and “learn heuristics that approach
best-response strategies.” (P. 137)
iii. Internalized norms: Furthermore, these learnt instrumental heuristics may
sediment into norms and values in repeated situations over time. Ostrom
suggests that “by norm I mean that the individual attaches an internal
valuation─positive or negative─to taking particular types of action.”
(Ostrom, 2014, P. 137) Within a particular societal and physical milieu, a
set of prominent norms and values will sediment into culture and they will
be socialized and internalized from generations to generations.
iv. Institutionalized rules: “By rule I mean that a group of individuals has
developed shared understandings that certain actions in particular
situations must , must not, or may be undertaken and that sanction will be
taken against those who do not conform.” (P. 137) As a result, strategic
situations of social dilemma will be institutionalized into typified course of
actions and routines, which expected outcomes can be taken granted.
v. Reciprocity: With refers to human’s capability to learn heuristics, to
internalize norms and to institutionalize rules, human beings can maintain
a state of reciprocity with their fellow humans. By reciprocity, Ostrom refers
to “a family of strategies that can be used in social dilemmasinvolving (1)
an effort to identify who else is involved, (2) an assessment of the
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likelihood that others are conditional cooperators, (3) a decision to
cooperate initially with others if others are trusted to be conditional
cooperators, (4) a refusal to cooperate with those who do not reciprocate,
and punishment of those who betray trust.” (Ostrom, 2014, P. 138)
Taken together, Ostrom has built a model of core relationship in collective
action as follow
(Source: Ostrom, 2014, P.144)
To incorporate some of the exogenous variables into the core-relationship model,
the model can be elaborated as follows
(Source: Ostrom, 2014, P. 148)
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C. Substantive Theories of Practical Reason and Public Reason
1. In the previous section we have explicated some main theses explaining “how”
social choice of preferences and rational choice of collective action are possible. In
this section, we will explicate the substantive choices and actions actually taken by
human aggregate or societies. That is to review some prominent theses which
attempt to vindicate what should be the preferable, desirable, morally right and/or
political legitimate “choices” that a society should choose in a particular
public-policy domain.
2. Levels of evaluation: The substantive contents of social choice, especially choice
among different value stances i.e. evaluation, may be differentiated into three
levels of evaluation. Ronal Dworkin has made a distinction between three levels of
value. He suggests that “ethnics studies how people best manage their
responsibility to live well, and personal morality what each as an individual owes
other people. Political morality, in contrast, studies what we all together owe others
as individuals when we act in and on behalf of that artificial collective person.”
(Dworkin, 2011, Pp. 327-8) Accordingly, evaluation may be categorized into
a. Ethical evaluation: It refers to desirable traits and features attributed to human
behaviors, actions, and conducts at individual level. It concerns questions such
as, What is a righteous character? What is a virtuous person? What is the worth
in life? What is an ethical conduct? …
b. Moral evaluation: It refers to desirable traits and features attributed to human
interactions and relationships among fellows humans. It concerns questions
such as, What is a fair deal? What is worth in friendship? What is good husband
and/or wife? What is good teacher and/or student?
c. Political values: It refers to the ethical and moral values taken by a given
society as of prominent importance that they should be imposed onto all
members of that society coercively. Accordingly, discourse of political value
entails the legitimacy of a public authority (the modern state) in substantiating
those prominent values onto the civil society which falls under its sovereignty.
More specifically, it relates to sound and legitimate public policies in various
public domains, such as education, social welfare, health care, etc.
2. In the field of moral and political philosophy, there are varieties of perspectives
trying to vindicate the substantive content of “good” at individual ethnical level,
social moral level, and public political level. For examples,
a. Emotivism or libertarianism
b. Consequentialism or utilitarianism
c. Deontological perspective
d. Perspective of virtue ethics
d. Perspective of historical institutionalism
e. Perspective of realization-focused comparison
D. John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
1. The backgrounds and significance of Rawls’ theory of justice:
a. John Rawls’s book A Theory of Justice has been characterized as a
deontological perspective of practical reasoning. More specifically, his
formulations have been categorized as a Kantian approach to the question of
what is good society.
b. Kant’s concept of categorical imperative
i. Kant stipulates that in a course of action, “I ought never to act except in such
a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law.”
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(Kant, 1996, p. 57)
ii. ‘Universal’ here means “an action is morally permissible if you would be
willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act. An action is morally
wrong if you are not willing to have everyone act as you are proposing to act.”
(Rogerson, 1991, p. 108)
c. G.A. Cohen, one of the outright critics of Rawls’ theory of justice, underlines
that “The publication of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice in 1971 was a
watershed. …Before A Theory of Justice appeared, political philosophy was
dominant by utilitarianism, the theory that sound social policy aims at the
maximization of welfare. Rawls found two features of utilitarianism repugnant.
He objected, first, to its aggregative character, its unconcern about the pattern
of distribution of welfare, which means that inequality in its distribution calls for
no justification. But, more pertinently… Rawls also objected to the utilitarian
assumption that welfare is the aspect of a person’s condition which commands
normative attention. He recommended normative evaluation with new
arguments (goods instead of welfare quanta) and new function (equality
instead of aggregation) from those arguments to values.” (Cohen, 2011, P. 44;
see also, Cohen, 2008, Pp. 11-14)
2. Conception of Justice as Fairness : John Rawls formulate his theory of justice from
the idea of “Justice as Fairness”, which was published in the form of a journal
article in Philosophical Review, vol. 64, no. 1, Pp. 164-194 in 1958. He wrote in the
paper that
a. “It might seem at the first sight that the concepts of justice and fairness are the
same, and that there is no reason to distinguish them, or to say that one is
fundamental than the other. I think that this impression is mistaken. In this
paper I wish to show that fundamental idea in the concept of justice is fairness;
and I wish to offer an analysis of the concept of justice from this point of view.”
(Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 42)
b. The meaning of fairness: “Fundamental to justice is the concept of fairness
which relates to right dealing between persons who are cooperating with or
competing against one another, as when one speak of fair games, fair
competition, and fair bargains. The question of fairness arises when free
persons, who have no authority over one another, are engaging in a joint
activity and among themselves settling or acknowledging the rules which
define it and which determine the respective shares in its benefits and burdens.
A practice will strike the parties as fair if none feels that, by participating in it,
they or any of the others are taken advantage of, or forced to give in to claims
which they do not regard as legitimate. This implies that each has a conception
of legitimate claims which he thinks it reasonable for others as well as himself
to acknowledge. …A practice is just or fair, then, when it satisfies the principles
which those who participate in it could propose to one another for mutual
acceptance under aforementioned circumstances.” (Rawls, 1999[1958], p. 59)
3. The idea of original position
a. In reality, most of the situations in which humans enter into cooperation or
competition are not in fair terms. That is they are not in equal footings when
engage in a bargain and one of the parties may has an upper hand over their
partners. The worst scenario the parties found themselves in a situation where
they have to strike a balance not in the most favorable terms of both parties. In
other words, “the best that each can do for himself may be a condition of lesser
justice rather than of greater good. …It is at this point that the conception of the
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original position embodies features peculiar to moral theory.” (Rawls, 1971, p.
120)
b. Accordingly, the conception of original position is a conceptual device initiated
by Rawls to “insure that fundamental agreement reach in it are fair” and yield
the name of “justice as fairness”. (Rawls, p. 17)
“The original position is defined in such a way that it is a status quo in which
agreements reach are fair. It is a state of affairs in which the partners are
equally represented as moral persons and the outcome is not conditioned by
arbitrary contingencies or the relative balances of social forces. Thus justice as
fairness is able to use the idea of pure procedural justice from the beginning.”
(Rawls, 1971, p. 120)
4. The conception of the veil of ignorance
a. “The idea of the original position is to set up a fair procedure so that any
principles agreed to will be just. The aim is to use the notion of pure procedural
justice as a basis of theory. Somehow we must nullify the effects of specific
contingencies which put men at odd and tempt them to exploit social and
natural circumstances to their own advantage. Now in order to do this I assume
that the parties are situated behind a veil of ignorance.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 136)
b. “It is assumed, then, that the parties do not know certain kinds of particular
facts.
i. First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social
status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and
abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone
know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or
even the special features of his psychology such as aversion to risk or
liability to optimism or pessimism.
ii. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular
circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its economic
or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to
achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to
which generation they belong.” (Rawls 1971, p. 137)
5. Two Principles of Justice: Based on the idea of justice as fairness, Rawls stipulates
right at the beginning of his book A Theory of Justice that “justice is the first virtue
of social institution” (P.3) and “the primacy of justice” over other social values.
Hence, he assets that the basic structure of a just society is to be constituted in
accordance with “the two principles of justice”.
a. “First Principle: Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive
total system of equal basic liberties compatible with similar system of liberty for
all.
b. “Second Principle: Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that
they are both
i. to the greatest benefits of the least advantaged, …and
ii. attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality
of opportunities.” (Rawls, 1971, p. 302)
6. Applications of the principles: “These principles primarily apply …to the basic
structure of society. They are to govern the assignment of rights and duties and to
regulate the distribution of social and economic advantages….These principles
presuppose that the social structure can be divided into two more or less distinct
parts.” (Rawls, 1871, p. 61),
a. The First Principle applies to those distinct “aspects of the social system that
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define and secure the equal liberties of citizenship. …The basic liberties of
citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (rihght to vote and to be eligible
for public office) together with freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of
conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of person along with right to hold
(personal) property; freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by
the concept of the rule of law. These liberties are all required to be equal…,
since citizens of just society are to have the same basic rights.” (p.61)
b. The Second Principle applies to those aspects of social system “that specify
and establish social and economic inequalities.” More specifically, it
“applies…to the distribution of income and wealth and to the design of
organizations that make use of differences in authority and responsibility, or
chains of command.” (p. 61)
7. Interpretation of the second principle
a. Rawls qualifies that the two constituent phrases in the Second Principle,
namely to “everyone’s advantage” and “equally open to all” need further
interpretation.
b. Rawls interprets the two phrases as follows (Rawls, 1971, p. 65)
“Everyone’s advantage”
“Equally open”
Principle of efficiency
Difference principle
Equality as careers
open to talent
System of Natural
Liberty
Natural Aristocracy
Equality as equality of
fair opportunity
Liberty Equality
Democratic Equality
8. Priority and lexical orders between principles of justice
a. The priority of liberty: The First Principle, namely the principle of liberty) has
lexical priority over the Second Principle: This ordering means that a departure
from the institutions of equal liberty require by the first principle cannot be
justified by, or compensated for, by greater social and economic advantages.”
(p. 61)
b. The priority of democratic equality over the other three systems, in other words,
the priority of difference principle and equality as equality of fair opportunity
over principle of efficiency and equality as careers open to talent.
E. Criticism on Rawls’ A Theory of Justice
Since its publication in 1971, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice has received numerous
criticisms. These criticisms and discussions have waged on for more than forty years.
As a result, the idea of justice or more general the field of practical reason and public
reason have been proliferated substantially, both in terms of theory and method.
These criticisms and discussions will be sketchily explored in three aspects:
1. Criticism on the original position and its deontological-liberal stance
2. Criticism on its transcendental-institutional approach
3. Criticism on the materials of justice: Equality of what?
F. Criticism on the original position and its deontological-liberal stance
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1. Critiques on the liberal assumptions underlying Rawls’ concept of original position
theory of justice ((Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 1-33)
a. The misconception of the conception of person qua person: In Rawls’ original
position a person is but a chooser of no conception of ends and good of life; of
no identity, lived experiences and lifeworld; and of no origins, history and
tradition.
b. Misconception of asocial individualism: In Rawls’ original position, person but a
chooser located in a game situation, in which she is totally independent of any
social affiliations, social roles, social responsibilities, social identity, and
conceptions of common goods.
c. Misconception of ahistorical universalism: The decision emerged from the
original position, i.e. principles of justice, is assumed to be universally
applicable across human cultures and social institutions.
d. Misconception of aempirical subjectivism: The decision arrived at by rational
choosers in original position is assumed be based purely on their subjective
preferences, totally in disregard of the empirical grounds, in which this
decisions are supposed to unfold and to be implemented.
2. Michael Sandel’s Critique on Rawls’ Deontological Liberalism
a. Michael Sandel published a book entitled Liberalism and the Limits of
Justice in 1982. The book is a direct critique on Rawls’ work A Theory of
Justice. The focus of Sandel’s critique is on Rawls’ building his theory of justice
on the assumption which Sandel characterizes as deontological liberalism.
b. By deontological liberalism, according to Sandel’s interpretation, it refers to
Rawls’ stance of assigning liberalism such a deontological and prominent
status that it becomes the Categorical Imperative of all ethical concerns. This
can be evident in the following three theses stipulated by Rawls.
c. Priority of justice: “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of
system of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected
or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient
and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. …Being
first virtue of human actives, truth and justice are uncompromising.” (Rawls,
1971, Pp. 3-4)
d. Right prior to good:
i. “We should therefore reverse the relation between the right and the good
proposed by the teleological doctrines and view the right as prior.” (Rawls,
1971, p. 560)
ii. Two capacities of moral personality:
“Moral personality is characterized by two capacities: one for a conception
of the good, the other for a sense of justice. When realized, the first is
expressed by a rational plan of life, the second by a regulative desire to act
upon certain principle of right. Thus a moral person is a subject with ends he
has chosen, and his fundamental preference is for conditions that enable
him to frame a mode of life that expresses his nature as a free and equal
rational being as fully as circumstances permit. Now the unity of the person
is manifest in the coherent of his plan, this unity being founded in the higher
order desire to follow, in ways consistent with his sense of right and justice,
the principles of rational choice. (P. 561)
iii. Inability to settle pluralism in conceptions of good:
As each moral person is to make his rational plans of life separately, a
plurality of life plans and conceptions of good is bound to emerge. To Rawls,
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it is practically impossible as well as undesirable to impose a dominant
conception of good (dominant-end) on a group of free-willing agents.
iv. As a result, the common aim of moral persons “in the original position is to
establish just and favorable conditions for each to fashion his own unity.
Their fundamental interest in liberty and in the means to make fair use of it is
the expression of their seeing themselves as primarily moral persons with
an equal right to choose their mode of life. Thus they acknowledge the two
principles of justice to be ranked in serial order as circumstances
permit. …The main idea is that given the priority of right, the choice of our
conception of the good is framed within definite limits. The principles of
justice and their realization in social forms define the bounds within which
our deliberations take place.” (P. 563)
e. The priority of individual autonomy:
i. Immanuel Kant’s conception of autonomy
“Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being
has the power to act in accordance with his ideas of laws ― that is, in
accordance with principles ― and only so has he a will. Since reason is
required in order to derive actions from laws, the will is nothing but practical
reason. If reason infallibly determines the will, then in a being of this kind the
actions which are recognized to be objectively necessary are also
subjectively necessary ― that is to say, the will is then a power to choose
only that which reason independently of inclination recognizes to be
practically necessary, that is, to be good.” (Kant, 2008[1785], P.5)
ii. “Following the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness, we can say that
by acting from these principles persons are acting autonomously: they are
acting from principles that would acknowledge under conditions that best
express their nature as free and equal rational beings. To be sure, these
conditions also reflect the situation of individuals in the world and that their
being subject to the circumstances of justice. But this simply means that the
conception of autonomy is that fitting for human beings. …The moral
education is education for autonomy. In due course everyone will know why
he would adopt the principles of justice and how they are derived from the
conditions that characterize his being an equal in a society of moral
persons.” (Rawls, 1971, P. 516)
3. Sandel’s communitarian critiques on Rawls’ deontological liberalism
a. Rawls’ flaws on the conception of the person
i. Voluntaristic connection between a person’s plans of life and the self: On
Rawls’ conception of the person, one can always voluntaristically make
choices among plans of life and conceptions of good. However, to the
communitarians, “establishing one’s own end is not a matter of choosing
from a menu of available possibilities, but one of discovering what one’s end
really are or ought to be.” (Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 50) And this discovery
process is deeply embedded in the sociocultural milieu which one is born
with and/or has to live with.
ii. Disconnection between a person’s plans of life and identity: In connection to
Rawls’ voluntaristic conception of choices of one’s end and/or plan of life,
such choices can hardly be a constitutive part of one identity, that is, these
ends and plans of life could not have been owned permanently and
continuously by oneself because they are subject to changes in accordance
with one’s preferences or desires. However, to Sandel or communitarians in
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general, the process of personal identification is in essence a social
interacting process. It is a balance, negotiation or even conflict between
one’s self-aspirations and the social obligation to family, tribe, social class,
nation, or any social bondage to which one belong.
iii. Disconnection between personal identity and sense of community and
common good: Accordingly, “Rawls’ conception of the self commits him to
an impoverished understanding of political community. …On Rawls’ view a
sense of community describe a possible aim of antecedently individuated
selves, not an ingredient of their identity. Essentially communal goods
thereby find their place only as one type of contender amongst many.”
(Mulhall and Swift, 1996, P. 52) To the communitarians, a community can be
conceived as a home in which one can attach one’s sense of belonging,
attribute one’s vocation for life and one’s meaning of existence.
b. Rawls’ flaws on the conception of community
i. A society is but a field of cooperation between antecedently individuated
rational choosers of ends based primarily on their independent preferences
and personal desires.
ii. The value of society is defined simply by its capacity to guarantee individual
freedom in realization of personal preferences and desires
iii. Apart from the fulfillment of individual freedom, a society is excluded from
any possibility of constituting any forms of common good, such as fraternity,
trust and care.
G. Criticism on the Transcendental-Institutional (or Deontological) Approach
1. Amartya Sen, in his book The Idea of Justice (2009), suggests in the introductory
chapter of the book that “there are two basic, and divergent, lines of reasoning
about justice among leading philosophy.” (P.5) “The distance between the two
approaches, transcendental institutionalism, on the one hand, and
realization-focused comparison, on the other, is quite momentous.” (P. 7)
2. Transcendental institutionalism:
By Transcendental institutionalism, it refers to the approach in political philosophy
“led by the work of Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century, and followed in
different ways by such outstanding thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
concentrated on identifying just institutional arrangements for society. This
approach…has two distinct features.” (Sen, 2009, P. 5)
a. “First, it concentrates its attention on what it identifies as perfect justice, rather
than on relative comparisons of justice and injustice. …The inquiry is aimed at
identifying the nature of ‘the just’, rather than finding some criteria for an
alternative being ‘less unjust’ than another.” (PP. 5-6)
b. “Second, in searching for perfection, transcendental institutionalism
concentrate primary on getting the institutions right, and it is not directly
focused on actual societies that would ultimately emerge. …It is important …to
note here that transcendental institutionalists in search of perfectly just
institutions have sometime also presented deeply illuminating analyses of
moral and political imperative regarding socially appropriate behavior. This
applies particularly to Immanuel Kant and John Rawls, both of whom have
participated in transcendental institutional investigation, but have also provide
far-reaching analyses of requirements of behavioural norms.” (P. 6-7)
According to Sen’s characterization, John Rawls is one of the recent exemplar
figure of the transcendental institutionalist approach to the studies of justice. (Sen,
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P. 6-7; and also Pp. 52-74)
3. Realization-focused comparison:
a. By Realization-focused comparison, it refer to “comparative approaches that
were concerned with social realization (resulting from actual institutions, actual
behavior and other influences). …They were all involved in comparisons of
societies that already existed or could feasibly emerge, rather than confining
their analyses on transcendental searches for a perfectly just society. Those
focusing on realization-focused comparisons were often interested primarily in
the removal of manifest injustice from the world that they saw.” (Sen, 2009, P.
7)
b. Sen has categorically alleged his work with the perspective of
realization-based comparison. In his own words, “this book (i.e. The Idea of
Justice) is an attempt to investigate realization-based comparisons that focus
on the advancement or retreat of justice. It is, in this respect, not in line with the
strong and more philosophically celeborated tradition of transcendental
institutionalism that emerged in the Enlightenment period (led by Hobbes and
developed by Locke, Rousseau and Kant, among others), but more the ‘other’
tradition that also took shape in about the same period or just after (pursued in
various way by Smith, Condorcet, Wollstonecraft, Bentham, Marx, Mill, among
others) (Sen, 2009, P. 8-9)
c. Sen specifically underlines the reasons why he prefers realization-focused
comparative approach to transcendental institutionalist approach. It is because
opting for the realization-focused comparative approach has “dual effect, first,
of taking the comparative rather than transcendental route, and second, of
focusing on actual realizations in the societies involved, rather than only on
institutions and rules.” (Sen, 2009, P. 9)
d. More specifically, Sen underlines there are two endogenous flaws in the
transcendental institutionalist approach:
i. Transcendentalism: Sen suggests that taking the transcendentalist stance
entails two problems.
- Problem of feasibility: “There may be no reasoned agreement at all, even
under strict conditions of impartiality and open-minded scrutiny (for
example, as identified by Rawls in his ‘original position’) on the nature of
the ‘just society’: this is the issue of the feasibility of finding an agreed
transcendental solution.” (Sen, 2009, P. 9)
- Problem of redundancy: “An exercise of practical reason that involve an
actual choice demands a framework for comparison of justice for
choosing among feasible alternatives and not an identification of a
available perfect situation that could not be transcended: this is the issue
of redundancy of the search for a transcendental solution.” (Sen, 2009,
P.9)
ii. Institutionalism: Sen queries whether we should focus “only on the
establishment of what are identified as the right institutions and rule”.
Instead, he ask, “should we not also have to examine what emerges in the
society, including the kind of lives that people can actually lead, given the
institutions and rules, but also other influences, including actual behaviour,
that would inescapably affect human lives?” (Sen, 2009, P. 10)
H. Criticism on the Materials of Justice: Equality of What?
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1. Criticism on good-based distributive justice:
Sen begins his critique on Rawls’ theory of justice by taking issue with Rawls’
focusing his two principles of justice solely on fair distributions of primary goods. In
a lecture delivered in 1979 entitled “Equality of What?” Sen argues that “there is,
in fact, an element of ‘fetishism’ in the Rawlsian framework. Rawls takes primary
goods as the embodiment of advantage.” Sen underlines that “judging advantage
purely in terms of primary goods leads to a partially blind morality.” (Sen, 1980, P.
216)
a. In relation to Rawls’ first principle of justice, which sets priority to the fair
distribution of basic liberty, Sen writes recently that “it has argue that the total
priority of liberty is too extreme. Why should we regard hunger, starvation and
medical neglect to be invariably less important that the violation of any kind of
personal liberty? …It is indeed possible to accept that liberty must have some
kind of priority, but total unrestrained priority is almost certainly an overkill.
There are, for example, many different types of weighting schemes that can
give partial priority to one concern over another.” (Sen, 2009, P. 65)
b. As in connection with the second principle of justice and more specifically
difference principle, Rawls’ problem of focusing mainly on the fair distribution
outcomes of primary goods for the benefits of the least advantaged is much
more evident. Sen suggests that “in the difference principle, Rawls judges the
opportunities that people have through the means they possess, without taking
into account the wide variations they have in being able to convert primary
goods into good living. For example, a disable person can do far less with the
same level of income and other primary goods than can an able bodied human
being. A pregnant woman needs, among other things, more nutritional support
than another person who is not bearing a child. The conversion of primary
goods into the capacity to do various things that a person may value doing can
vary enormously with differing inborn characteristics (for example, propensities
to suffer from some inherited diseases), as well as disparate acquired features
or the divergent effects of varying environmental surroundings (for example,
living in a neighbourhood with endemic presence, or frequent outbreaks, of
infectious diseases). There is, thus, a strong case for moving from focusing on
primary goods to actual assessment of freedoms and capabilities.” (Sen, 2009,
P. 65-66)
2. Conceptualization of capability:
a. A shift of the informational focus of studies of justice: Sen begins his
construction of the capability approach to justice with his conception of
“informational focus”. He suggests that “ Any substantive theory of ethics and
political philosophy, particularly any theory of justice, has to choose an
informational focus, that is, it has to decide which features of the world we
should concentrate on in judging a society and in assessing justice and in
justice.” (Sen, 2009, P. 231) Sen points out that there have been various
informational focuses at work in the studies of justice, for examples
utilitarianism focuses on utility and its entailed satisfaction, Rawls focuses on
the holdings of primary goods, and Dworkin focuses on resource holdings with
reference to “liberal equality”, etc. (Sen, 1993, p. 30) Instead, Sen bases his
theory of justice on the informational focus of capabilities and freedoms.
b. The conception of “functioning”: Sen underlines that the most primitive notion
in the capability approach is the idea of “functionings”. He conceptualizes that
“functionings represent parts of the state of a person─in particular the various
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things that he or she manages to do or be in leading a life. …Some
functionings are very elementary, such as being adequately nourished, being in
good health, etc., and may be strongly valued by all, for obvious reasons.
Others may be more complex, but still widely valued, such as achieving self or
being socially integrated. Individual may, however, differ a good deal from each
other in the weights they attach to these different functionings.” (Sen, 1993, P.
31)
c. The conception of capability: Accordingly, “the capability of a person reflects
the alternative combinations of fuctionings the person can achieve, and from
which he or she choose one collection.” (Sen, 1993, P. 31) In short, “capability
is our ability to achieve various combinations of functionings that we can
compare and judge against each other in terms of what we have reason to
value.” (Sen, 2009, P. 233)
d. Distinction between well-being and agency: …. Accordingly, the idea of
capability can be conceptualized into capability of “agency achievement” and
capability of “well-being achievement” (Sen, 1993, P. 37) Sen has specifically
given priority to the former over the latter. It is because “overall agency goals”
would usually include promotion of one’s well-being. Moreover, in some critical
situations, human agents may choose the achievement of their agency goals at
the expanses of their well-beings. For example, under foreign invasion, civil
soldiers may willing to risk their lives in defending their country. Hence, to
provide the freedom and capability for a person to achieve his or her agency
goal is more fundamental than providing him or her the capability of
maintaining his or her well-being.
f. Distinction between achievement and freedom to achieve: Sen has further
conceptualized the idea of capability with another conceptual distinction, that is,
the distinction between the capability of actually attain something and the
capability of being free to attain the thing valued. (Sen 2009, P. 235-238) Once
again has assigned the priority to the latter over the former. Sen underlines that
such a distinction and prioritization is important to the capability approach
because “it is oriented towards freedom and opportunities, that is, the actual
ability of people to chose to live different kinds of lives within their reach, rather
than confining attention only to what may be described as the culmination─or
aftermath─of choice.” (Sen, 2009, P. 237)
g. In summary, the conceptualization of the idea of capability in Sen capability
approach to justice can be presented in the follow table.
Well-being Achievement
Agency Achievement
Actual Achievement
Well-being Achievement
Agency Achievement
Freedom to achieve
Well-being Freedom
Agency Freedom
(Adopted from Sen, 1993, P. 35)
Obviously, within Sen’s capability approach to justice the concept of capability
is focused on primarily “agency-freedom” conceptualization rather than the
other three alternatives.
3. Capability-based Justice in Communitarian vs. Liberal Debate
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a. Capability, society and public reasoning: Having rested the concept of
capability on the “agency-freedom” footing, Sen further points out the dilemma
between the individualism and communitarianism built in his concept of
capability. That is, within the “agency-freedom” based concept of capability, we
have to decide whether the capability should rest primarily on individual or on
community. To resolve this dilemma, Sen has provided the following two
additional qualifications to his capability approach to justice.
b. Capability and society: Sen has specifically underlines that “identifying the
capability approach as methodological individualism would be significant
mistake.” (Sen, 2009, P. 244) He goes on indicating that “It is hard…to envision
cogently how persons in society can think, choose or act without being
influenced in one way or another by the nature and working of the world around
them. …To note the role of ‘thinking, choosing and doing’ by individuals is just
the beginning of recognizing what actually does happen, …but we cannot end
there without an appreciation of the deep and pervasive influence of society on
our ‘thinking, choosing and doing’. When someone thinks and chooses and
does something, it is, for sure, that person─and not someone else─who is
doing these things. But it would be hard to understand why and how he or she
undertakes these activities without some comprehension of his or her societal
relations.” (Sen, 2009, P. 245) Hence, Sen has explicated at length how the
concept of capability should be construed in correspondence with the concept
of identity, which in Sen’s conceptualization is pluralistic, multiple and diverse
in nature. (Sen, 2009, P. 247; Sen, 2006)
c. Capability and public reasoning: Having located the concept capacity at the
social rather than individual level, Sen are facing yet another problem. That is
can a consensus be researched by a society at a given point in time the
conception of capabilities and their ranking? Though Sen has categorically
refuted to work out “some fixed list of relevant capabilities,” (Sen, 2009, P. 242)
yet he does compromise that “the approach of capability is entirely consistent
with a reliance on partial rankings and on limited agreements. …The main task
is to get things right on the comparative judgments that can be reached
through personal and public reasoning, rather than to feel compelled to opine
on every possible comparison that could be considered.” (Sen, 2009, P. 243)
Hence, Sen believes that it is only through what he called “interactive public
reasoning” that we may be able to obtain “a better understanding of the role,
reach, and significance of particular functionings and their combination.” (Sen,
2009, P. 242)
4. Objectivity and impartiality in public reasoning: Having substantiated the
capability-based concept of justice in communitarian perspective, Sen has come to
one of the most difficult topic in substantive theory of practical reasoning, how to
arbitrary a specific ethical, moral and/or political choice, preference or even action
is correct? What is the criterion for the judgment?
Amartya Sen renders the thesis of impartiality
a. Three concepts of objectivity: The concept of objectivity can imply different
meanings between theoretical and practical science, espeically between
natural sciences and practical sciences.
i. Objectivity of things: It refers to the state of existence of a physical object
independent of human mind. In enquiries in natural science, a proposition
can be verified by means of seeking corresponding state of existence in
respective things, objects or phenomena. Based on this so-called
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correspondence principle, a scientific proposition can claim its objectivity
by referring to the existence of the respective things or affairs. Furthermore,
the repeatability of the occurrence the phenomena under study could
increase the objectivity of the proposition and its verification.
ii. Objectivity of meanings: It refers to the state existence of shared meanings
among a group of interpreters. Conventionally, it is claimed that human
believes, utterance, expression, written texts, work of art etc. all bear
subjectivity of the speakers or authors. However, as these expressions of
subjectivity have been objectivated into written text, historical accounts
and/or work of art. They will obtain their own existence alienated from its
makers. As the texts, accounts and work are read and interpreted by large
numbers of humans. They may generate shared meanings, feelings,
believes or even convictions. As a result, the meanings embedded in the
texts, accounts and work will have obtained their objectivity. Sen has
characterized this type of objectivity as objectivity of comprehension and
communication (Sen, 2009, P. 118)
iii. Objectivity of practical reasoning: Sen argues that in ethical, moral and
public reasoning, in short practical reasoning, objectivity can be generated
by means of constant and critical scrutiny among a group of reasonable
persons. He approvingly quoted Rawls argument that
“The first essential is that a conception of objectivity must establish a public
framework of thought sufficient for the concept of judgement to apply and
for conclusions to be reached on the basis of reasons and evidence after
discussion and due reflection. ….To say that a political conviction is
objective is to say that there are reasons, specified by a reasonable and
mutually recognizable political conception, sufficient to convince all
reasonable persons that it is reasonable.” (Rawls, 1993, Quoted in Sen,
2009, P. 42)
b. The concept of impartiality: Based on the objectivity of practical objectivity, Sen
further proposes the concept of impartiality as the most fundamental base for
realization of the idea of justice. Sen points out that the concept of impartiality
has been commonly applied by several philosophers as the building block of
the idea of justice. For examples
i. In Immanuel Kant oft-quoted “categorical imperative” in practical reason,
he specifies “Act always on such a maxim as thou canst at the same time
will to be a universal law” (Kant, 1907; Quoted in Sen, 2009, P. 117-8)
ii. Henry Sidgwick in his book The Method of Ethnics paraphrases Kant’s
maxim in the following words, “That whatever is right for me must be right
for all persons in similar circumstances ─ which as the form in which I
accept the Kantian maxim ─ seemed to me to be certainly fundamental,
certainly true, and not without practical importance.” (Sidgwick, 1966;
Quoted in Sen, 2009, P. 118)
iii. John Rawls in his book Political Liberalism in 1993 has replaced his thesis
of original position with the thesis that “reasonable” and impartial persons”
can arrive at reciprocal and mutual beneficial conclusion on the principles
of justice in political domain. (Rawls, 1993)
iv. Finally, Adam Smith invokes the idea of the ‘impartial spectator’. He
proposes in The Theory of Moral Sentiments that “when judging one’s
own conduct, to examine it as we imagine an impartial spectator would
examine it’, or as he elaborate in a later edition of the same book: ‘to
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examine out own conduct as we imagine any other fair and impartial
spectator would examine it’.” (Sen, 2009, P. 124)
With references to these perspectives, Sen concludes that “The place of
impartiality in the evaluation of social justice and societal arrangements is
central to the understanding of justice.” (Sen, 2009, P. 223)
c. Two domains of impartiality: Sen suggests that “there is …a basic distinction
between two quite different ways of invoking impartiality. …I shall calls
respectively ‘open’ and ‘closed’ impartiality.” (P. 123)
i. Closed impartiality: “With, ‘closed impartiality’ the procedure of making
impartial judgements invokes only the members of a given society or
nation (or what John Rawls calls a given ‘people’) to whom the judgements
are made.” (Sen, 2009, P. 123)
ii. Open impartiality: “In the case of ‘open impartiality’, the procedure of
making impartial assessments can (and in some cases, must) invoke
judgements , among others, from outside the focal group, to avoid
parochial bias. In Adam Smith’s famous use of the device of the ‘impartial
spectator’, the requirement of impartiality requires…the invoking of
disinterested judgement of ‘any fair and impartial spectator’, not
necessarily (indeed sometimes ideally not) belonging to the focal group.’”
(Sen, 2009, P. 123)
I. In Search of the Just Educational Governance Model:
From the excursion of the discourse on justice in the past fifty year, we may not yet
obtain an encompassing framework of justice. However, we are at least bettter
equipped then before with some essential conceptual tools and analytical instruments
that may illuminate our trail in searching for a just educational governance model for
mainland for the 21st century.
1. The approach to justice: Between the transcendental institutionalism and
realization-based comparison approach, I would suggest we should adopt the
more realistic and pragmatic approach of realization-based comparison approach
in reviewing and designing educational policy and educational governance models.
Within a modern society, attaining global equality and justice among all educational
sectors across all children from diversity backgrounds is simply impossible. As
James S. Coleman once say in reviewing his life-long strive for equality of
educational opportunities for the US schooling system, he specifies that he has not
been working for attaining equality in the US schooling system, and instead what
he has been striving is to lessen the inequality existing in the system. Coleman’s
view echoes exactly Sen’s conception of realization-based comparison approach
to justice.
2. The materials of justice: One of most contested domains within the perspective of
distributive justice has been on the issue of what is to be distributed justly. From
utilitarian’s total utility, Rawls’ good-based justice, Dworkin’s resource-based justice
to Sen’s capability-based justice, students of distributive justice have been
wrestling with these conflicting perspectives for more than a century. As we apply
the debates to the designing educational policy and administrative measures, my
choice will be for Sen’s capability-based justice, more specifically, the
“agency-freedom” capability-based justice. The assumption behind this choice is a
simple believe that all humans are born with a particular potentials, which should
be given genuine opportunities to develop to the full, according to their own free will,
reasons and choice.
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3. The players in the distributive game: Another focus of contention in the field of
justice is the characterization of the participants in the distributive games. We have
witnessed a line of characters, ranging from egoistic individuals rationally pursuing
one’s own self-interest to the maximum, reasonable persons, trusting and
trustworthy commons, to deliberative, reflective, impartial spectators. However, as
this spectrum of characterizations are applied to the context of education system, it
seems unrealistic as well as impossible to homogenize all participants into one
typification. For example, parents will strive hard to get the best for their children
(especially simple child); school teachers may treat the students in her class
equally or even impartially, but it is common findings in teacher career adjustment
study that teachers will seek satisfactory working environments in terms of student
ability, ethnicity, social classes and varieties of other backgrounds; School
administrators, especially school-heads may be idealized as openly impartial
educators, who would admit whatever children, who happen to appear at the
school door step. But in reality, under the perfromative pressure of
school-league-table ranking, quality-assurance inspection, and failing-school label
and shut-down, school administers could easily fall into the egoistic trap of
adopting administrative measures of self-interest for the school. Even
governmental officials, who are responsible for designing and implementation of
educational policy for the who nation, may face hard choices or even social
dilemma in allocating limited supply of resources and/or personnel and have to
abandon the global-impartial ideal in educating the future citizens of the nations.
4. The optimal mechanism: Last but less, when it comes to the design (not to mention
passage and implementation) of the substantive policy and/or measures in
concrete educational domains, we are once again back to the choice Elinor Ostrom
advocates in her Nobel Prize Lecture that there is only quick-fix solution (such as
market or hierarchy) by to fall back to polycentric governance. Nevertheless, we
may begin the complex and polycentric discourse of distributive justice of
education via Sen’s conceptions of impartiality and ethical objectivity.
To summarize, to constitute a just governance of education policy, the sensitizing
framework to begin with is as follows.
Approach to Justice
Material of Justice
Players in the
Distributive Game
The Optimal
Mechanism
Transcendental institutionalism;
Realization-based comparison approach
Gross-Total Utility;
Good-based Justice;
Resource-based Justice;
Capability-based Justice
Egoistic self-interest maximizes;
Reasonable, fair, & reciprocal persons;
Trusting & Trustworthy persons;
Deliberative, Reflective & Impartial Spectators
Polycentric Discourse of Complexity by Ethical Objectivity
& Impartiality
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