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Political Republicanism and Perfectionist Republicanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Paul Weithman
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Abstract

In recent years, a number of political thinkers in philosophy, political theory and law have defended political theories which are deeply indebted to classical republicanism. Like classical republicans, these thinkers have claimed that a flourishing polity depends upon citizens' exercise of the civic virtues. Unlike classical republicans, some of these thinkers have defended what might be called “political republicanisms”—republicanisms which are also indebted to the methodological restraint of Rawls's political liberalism. The article argues that political republicanism suffers from a viability problem. Its list of civic virtues is too short. More worrisome, the public justifications that would be available to a political republican regime are not sufficient to motivate the development of the civic virtues. Therefore, if we are to be republicans, we should be “perfectionist republicans” instead.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 66 , Issue 2 , Spring 2004 , pp. 285 - 312
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2004

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References

This article was originally drafted for a symposium on neo-republicanism sponsored by the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. I am grateful to Dan Brudney, Frank Michelman, Philip Petit, Phil Quinn, David Solomon, Michael Thrush and audiences at the University of Chicago Law School and the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture for helpful comments on earlier versions.

1. The phrase “decent society” is taken from the title of Margalit, Avashai, The Decent Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

2. The word “perfectionist” is meant to recall both John Rawls's use of the term and descriptions of Joseph Raz's view as “perfectionist liberalism.” No connection with extreme or Nietzchean forms of perfectionism are intended. Rawls applies the adjective “perfectionist” to theories like Aristotle's according to which the state has an interest in promoting human excellence; see Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 25Google Scholar. Raz's liberalism is said to be perfectionist because he argues that autonomous choice is choice among options that are genuinely worthy; see Raz, Joseph, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 417.Google Scholar

3. Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975).Google Scholar

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5. Wood, Gordon, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1998).Google Scholar

6. For an overview and critique of the uses to which republicanism was put once it gained currency among historians, see Rogers, Daniel T., “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept,” The Journal of American History 11 (1992): 11–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; I am grateful to John McGreevy for this reference. For a deep and interesting reply to Rogers, see White, G. Edward, “Reflections on the ‘Republican Revival’: Interdisciplinary Scholarship in the Legal Academy,” Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 6 (1994): 1–36.Google Scholar

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9. Sherry, Suzanna, “The Intellectual Origins of the Constitution: A Lawyer's Guide to Contemporary Historical Scholarship,” Constitutional Commentary 5 (1988): 323–48.Google Scholar

10. See Kalman, Laura, The Strange Career of Legal Liberalism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 132–66.Google Scholar

11. Sandel, Michael J., Democracy's Discontent: America's Search for a Public Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).Google Scholar

12. Pettit, Phillip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).Google Scholar

13. For this objection see Waldron, Jeremy, “Virtue en Masse,” in Debating Democracy's Discontent, ed. Allen, Anita L. and Regan, Milton C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Williams, Bernard, “Saint-Just's illusion,” in his Making Sense of Humanity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 135–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. See Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, p. 316Google Scholar: “Humanist political thought excelled at this sort of analysis, and subordinated the consideration of power to it; liberty, virtue and corruption, rather than the location of authority, were its prime concerns.”

15. Pettit, , Republicanism, p. 8.Google Scholar

16. Ibid.

17. Pettit's neo-republicanism is also extremely interesting and worthy of critical examination in its own right. Here I simply want to point out that the republican tradition is more complex, and his appropriation of it more selective, than his historiography occasionally suggests. As I noted, Pettit takes freedom as nondomination by others as the “supreme political value” of his theory. The achievement of this sort of political freedom is so valuable, Pettit thinks, because it brings the independent social status that Pettit says was the mark of citizenship in the republican tradition. There is ample support in Pocock's historical work for the claim that Italian and English republicans valued such independence and thought it a short step from dependence to corruption. On the other hand, I am not aware of anything in Cicero's writings that suggests he noticed the tension between his embrace of republicanism and the Roman institution of patronage and clientage, under which some citizens were very much dependent upon others. For the importance of clientage in Cicero's Rome, see Gruen, Erich S., The Last Generation of the Roman Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 435, 446Google Scholar; on pp. viii–ix, Gruen stresses that clients' dependence on their patrons was social as well as political. Furthermore, republican citizenship was not always valued because of the social or political status it conferred. Sometimes it was sought for the access it brought to economic benefits. See Sherwin-White, A.N., The Roman Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980 ), p. 135.Google Scholar Pettit argues that making freedom as he understands it the central political value of his neo-republicanism fits with the contrast between freedom and slavery that is so prominent a feature of republican writing. This is because slaves' lack of freedom, Pettit thinks, consists precisely in the fact that they are legally and socially dominated even by masters who let them do what they like. But this seizes on one feature of the slave's status at the expense of others that are arguably of equal importance. To mention two others, slaves are not typically consulted about the ends or organization of the enterprises in which they are employed, and they are typically exploited in the crude sense that those enterprises are not reciprocally beneficial. Their efforts are expended for the benefit of others in non-consensual arrangements. We can imagine republican theories which made much of the opposition between slavery and freedom, but which seized on these other features of slavery instead. Thus in some moods Cicero made much of the importance of consultation. The contrast Aquinas drew between the rule over slaves and political rule turned on the fact that slaves are used for another's benefit; see Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologiae I.96.4.Google Scholar A Thomist republicanism could take this distinction as its point of departure; perhaps Jacques Maritain held such a view.

18. The question of how to maintain republican government against the ravages of fortuna and of changing circumstance was central to the republican tradition of thought. This theme is brilliantly explored by Pocock in his Machiavellian Moment. The question as Pocock conceives it is especially well put by Zuckert, Michael P., Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 161.Google Scholar For a similar concern among Roman and early American republicans, see Wood, , Creation, p. 51.Google Scholar

19. See Cicero, De Re Publico 6.xxiii–xxvi.Google Scholar

20. The connection Jefferson saw between yeomanry and republicanism is well known. Montesquieu, on the other hand, famously thought that commerce was necessary for republican government; see Pocock, , Machiavellian Moment, p. 441.Google Scholar For thinkers who believed that a republic required citizen-soldiers, Machiavellian Moment, pp. 203, 243–44, 271, 413.Google Scholar

21. Religious belief was long thought necessary to sustain American republicanism; see Macedo, Stephen, Diversity and Distrust: Civic Education in a Multicultural Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).Google Scholar By “quasi-religious beliefs” I mean the belief in personal immortality that is so prominent in Cicero, De Re Publico 6.ixff.Google Scholar

22. For the founders on civic virtue generally, see Wood, , Creation, pp. 65ff.Google Scholar

23. For Cicero, see the text just cited at supra note 24; also his De Officiis. For Sallust, see Catalinae Coniuratio. For the influence of Roman republicanism on the Founders, see Wood, , Creation, pp. 48–53;Google ScholarBailyn, , Ideological Origins, p. 25;Google Scholar and Stanley Elkins, and McKitrick, Eric, The Age of Federalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 6, 48.Google Scholar

24. Michelman, , “Law's Republic,” p. 1503.Google Scholar

25. Sunstein, , “Republican Revival,” p. 1550.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., p. 1555.

27. Michelman, , “Law's Republic,” p. 1528.Google Scholar

28. Sunstein, , “Republican Revival,” p. 1541 note 8;Google Scholar also Michelman, , “Law's Republic,” pp. 1550–51;Google Scholar and Skinner, Quentin, “The Republican Ideal of Political Liberty,” in Machiavelli and Republicanism, ed. Bock, , Skinner, and Viroli, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 297, 307–309.Google Scholar

29. Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), p. 374.Google Scholar

30. There is one passage in which he could be taken to say that republicans may divide between political and comprehensive republicanisms, though this reading strains the text and Sandel does not say which republicanism he would prefer Democracy's Discontent, p. 338.Google Scholar The tenor of Democracy's Discontent suggests that he thinks of republicanism as a comprehensive doctrine. When pressed later by critics to say whether he is a “strong” or a “weak” republican, Sandel replied in terms that suggest his republicanism is comprehensive, though his reply did not refer to the distinction between political and comprehensive views; Allen, and Regan, , Debating Democracy's Discontent, pp. 324–27.Google Scholar

31. Sherry notes that the republicanism which was current in the American founding period “stemmed from the classical tradition of political participation as the highest human good” (Sherry, Suzanna, “Without Virtue There Would Be No Liberty,” Minnesota Law Review 78 [1993]: 69).Google Scholar When Sherry lays out her own proposals for education in the civic virtues, she conspicuously stops short of claims about the highest human good; see “Without Virtue,” pp. 75ff.Google Scholar See also Sherry, Suzanna, “Responsible Republicanism: Educating for Citizenship,” University of Chicago Law Review 62 (1995): 172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Her reticence, in conjunction with her remarks about eighteenth-century American republicanism, suggest that she favors a more modest and perhaps a political republicanism, one that gives a weaker account of the civic virtues. As if to confirm this, Sherry says that the “moral certitude of the earlier republican eras has been irretrievably lost; we no longer have faith in God, natural law or even a human telos that lent virtue its incontestability in the past” (Sherry, , “Responsible Republicanism,” pp. 143–44).Google Scholar

32. As Dagger notes near the end of his book Civic Virtues: Rights, Citizenship and Republican Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997),Google Scholar Rawls distinguishes classical republicanism from civic humanism. The former, Dagger writes, is “the more modest view that citizens of a democratic society must exhibit ‘to a sufficient degree’ the political virtues, as Rawls has defined them, and ‘be willing to take part in political life.’” By contrast civic humanism, he continues, “is a comprehensive doctrine, ‘a form of Aristotelianism' in which ‘taking part in democratic politics is viewed as the privileged locus of the good life.’” Both quotes are from p. 186. According to Dagger, Rawls claims that justice as fairness is a form of classical republicanism. Because justice as fairness is a political conception of justice it follows that it is, on Dagger's reading, a political republicanism.

33. In an attempt to show that Rawls's distinction between political and comprehensive views is not clearly drawn, Dagger introduces a distinction between views which are “implicitly” and “explicitly comprehensive.” Implicitly comprehensive views are those that rely on a conception of the nonpolitical good but do so implicitly rather than explicitly. Dagger then argues that Rawls's view, while ostensibly political must be implicitly comprehensive. It must, that is, rely implicitly on a conception of the nonpolitical good. The crucial step in Dagger's argument for this conclusion is the claim that justice as fairness is not neutral in its foreseen but unintended affects. For this line of argument, see Civic Virtues, pp. 188–91.Google Scholar I would argue that to make the distinction between political and comprehensive views dependent upon the difference between neutrality and non-neutrality of foreseen but unintended affects is mistaken, though I cannot pursue the matter here.

34. As Amy Gutmann seems to think that for purposes of justifying programs of democratic education, the distinction between political and comprehensive liberalisms is less important than the distinction between liberalisms which are “deeply partisan” and those which are not; see her “Civic Education and Social Diversity,” Ethics 105 (1995): 575.Google Scholar

35. For just two of the many constructive works in which Sunstein defends it, see Sunstein, Cass, The Partial Constitution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993)Google Scholar and his One Case at a Time (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).Google Scholar

36. He writes of “the way the American constitution understands [the concept of a republic], in terms of a deliberative approach to democracy”; see Sunstein, Cass, Republic.Com (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 37.Google Scholar

37. See Cohen, Joshua, “The Economic Basis of Deliberative Democracy,” Social Philosophy and Policy 6 (1988): 25–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38. For a clear statement of such a theory, see Cohen, Joshua, “Deliberation and Democratic Legitimacy,” in The Good Polity, ed. Hamlin, and Pettit, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp. 17–34.Google Scholar

39. Indeed Thomas Aquinas, who calls the proper orientation toward these things “liberality,” argues that that orientation is part of justice rather than temperance; see Summa Theologiae II–II,117,5 ad 2.Google Scholar Some will think that Aquinas is correct. Temperance, they may think, cannot be a civic virtue for it seems to be a self regarding virtue having to do with the proper regulation of one's own appetites for food, drink and sex. Note first, however, that even apparently self-regarding virtues can also be civic virtues, for actions that proceed from them can have political consequences. Aquinas himself recognizes this at Summa Theologiae I–II,61,5Google Scholar where he grants that in one sense, all the natural virtues are political virtues. Furthermore, Thomas's argument that the virtue at issue is part of justice rather than temperance does not turn, as the objection does, on a distinction between self-regarding and civic virtues. Instead it turns on one between appetites and pleasures of the body on the one hand, and those of the soul (“concupiscentia.. et delectatio … animalis”) on the other. Temperance, he says, regulates the former; he numbers the desire for and delight in money and possessions among the latter. By classifying delight in money and possessions among the pleasures of the soul, Aquinas draws attention to a fact I would also stress. The undue attachment to wealth and possessions has a significant intellectual component. It often arises from reflection on the status we think wealth and possessions confer. But the unqualified distinction Aquinas seems to draw between pleasures and appetites of the body and those of the soul is untenable. Bodily pleasures and appetites also have significant intellectual components. This is clear from the role of fantasy in sexual desire and from the fact that educated tastes can make the pleasures of food and drink more nuanced and enjoyable. Once we recognize the untenability of Thomas's distinction, the way is clear to argue that the pleasures of possession are among those governed by temperance. It seems to me that they are.

The connections I have asserted among status, reflection and the pleasures of possession seem to have been recognized by Cicero; see the counsel against ostentatious dwellings at De Offlciis I, 139–40.Google Scholar These paragraphs of De Officiis fall in the section of the work devoted to temperance. Thus though it is not clear, Cicero may side with me and against Aquinas on which virtue regulates our attachment to wealth and possessions.

40. See Taylor, Charles, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 9.Google Scholar

41. Luke 12:34.Google Scholar

42. Cited at Wood, Creation, p. 427.Google Scholar

43. See Rawls, , Political Liberalism, p. 10.Google Scholar