From the Depths of Despair to Castles in the Air : Critique in a Pragmatist Theory of Justice

Abstract

One understanding of the relation between critique and crisis - which is behind Koselleck's famous book that goes by this title - is that critique is supposed to trigger a crisis in unjust societal structures and thereby help to elicit a change in these structures. It is safe to say that contemporary justice theory only very rarely, if ever, lives up to that demand. This shortcoming might be due to the currently dominant procedure in justice theory which commences with the exposition of what justice consists of (ideal theory) and only thereafter applies the scheme that thereby emerges to the real world (non-ideal theory). In proceeding like this, the justice theorist, supposedly, narrows down its view with regards to currently existing problems because, as already Popper emphasized, each and every theoretical decision yields a certain focus when facing the world - and in doing so fades down other regions. For example, the justice theorist who labels deliberation the essence of justice might not be attuned to the problems of justice people, who are not able to communicate, suffer from. As a result, this way of doing justice theory is prone to overlook significant real-life problems with a bearing on justice. The lesson to be taken away from this deficiency is that justice theory needs to pay more attention to the task of identifying real-world problems with a bearing on justice; every theory of justice that intends to make a difference in the real world - and what else could be a reasonable task for pursuing such theory - needs to be equipped with an alarm device for identifying such problems. My task in this talk will be to show why a pragmatist theory of justice, which I outlined and for which I argued in an earlier work, is better capable of being true to this demand and thereby also to the desired relation between critique and crisis. This pragmatist theory proceeds by a method which is made up of four building blocks: criticism, experimentalism, applied ethics, and reconciliation, whereby the first is supposed to equip this theory with the alarm device necessary. As its alarm device for problems in the real world, the pragmatist pays attention to utterances of dissatisfaction coming from society. These utterances exist in many forms, e.g. they can come as cries of the wounded (in James's words), they can find expression in grand utopian schemes of how society ought to be etc. On the theoretical level the pragmatist differentiates, on the one hand, between utterances put forward in a formal or an informal way crossed, on the other hand, with utterances being voiced by persons affected by the problem or by bystanders whereby each of these different forms of uttering dissatisfaction has its boons and banes when used as the alarm device mentioned. However, as there is not a bite everywhere it itches this justice theory is prone to see problems of justice where there are none. In order to avoid harm from this potential overestimation of problems the justice theorist is, after becoming aware of an utterance of dissatisfaction, supposed to translate this utterance into a real-world problem. If this is possible the utterance qualifies for further investigation with the three other building blocks mentioned. If not, the pragmatist is supposed to show why this utterance is not based on such a problem and, as such, unjustified.