Aristotle believed the purpose of polities is:
- shape the character
- cultivate the virture of citizens
- inculcate civic excellence
- make possible a good way of life
He thought as a good citizen, you must practice in communities and politics because only during excercising you can discern paritcular features which can't be learned from reading books.
Aristotle's theory of justice is teleological, it is a matter of fit the person with their virtues and excellence to the approriate roles.
Using Casey Martin v. PGA tour case as example，Prof. Sandel helped students to understand deeply that Golf debate is not only a debate of the purpose, the teleological feature, but also the debate about allocation of the honor. If it was allowed to use golf cart in tournament, Golf is no longer viewed as a sports, a competition, instead, it would become a game of skills, an entertainment.
Further, Sandel addressed the contradiction of Aristotle's teleological theory with freedom: Be free is to be independent of any pariticular roles, traditions, conventions. Tie justice to some particular conceptions of goods restricts the freedom of individuals.
第十一讲: Obligations and Loyalties
Aristotle v.s Kant & Rawl on Freedom and Justice:
- Aristotle: We are free insofar as we have the capacity to realize our potential.
- Kant: We are free when we have the capacity to act automonously and capable of choosing our ends.
- Aristotle: Justice consists in giving people what they deserve, and a just society is one that enables human beings to realize their highest nature and to live the good life.
- Kant: A just society is to set up a fair framework of rights within which citizens may be free to pursue their own conceptions of the good for themselves.
The comparison between Aristotle and Kant also leads to the communitarian view of self: The self is claimed or encumbered to some extent by history, tradition, the family, the communities, the country.
There are two kinds of moral obligations defined by libertarian:
- Universal duties that we owe to every human being;
- Voluntary obligations that we acquire by consent, as when we agree to help someone or promise to be faithful to our partners and friends.
Several examples to weigh loyalty over duty are presented in the course, among discussion, most students voted for moral obligations to do more for people who are closer to them, even though it might compete with a universal duty to humanity.
In beginning, Prof. Sandel summarized: The love of humanity is noble sentiment, but most of time we live our lives by smaller solidarities. This may reflect certain limits to the bounds of moral sympathy, but more important, it reflects the fact, that we learn to love humanity, not in general, but through its particular expressions.
After hosting a heated debate about same sex marriage, after telling the story how the Massachusetts supreme judicial court changed its standpoint in the same-sex marriage case, Sandel concluded that government can't be neutral on difficult moral questions and reasoning about good, about purposes, and ends is unavoidable feature of aruging about justice. Put it another way, it has to figure out the essential point and purpose of moral issues before to reach a just conclusion. In that case, the exlucsive and permanent commitment of the partners to one another is the essential point and purpose of the marriage, therefore, the same-sex marriage is permitted.
Unavoidably, there is persisting disagreement about the good life and about the moral and religious questions in mordern pluralist society. Sandel suggested we can apply the method of moral reasoning which was proposed by Rawls——the method of reflective equlibrium. That is moving back and forth between our considered judgements about particular cases and the general principles we would articulate to make sense of these judgments. In Rawls opinion, a conception of justice is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view.
Finally, Sandel told us the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason, the purpose of the philosophy is by estranging us from the familiar, by unsettling our settled assumptions. Once the familiar turns strange, Once we start to reflect on our circumstance, it's never quite same again.
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