Note: To order the complete DVD, please contact us at 800-876-8930.
Hayek and Buchanan. When intellectual giants meet, they talk about the work of John Rawls, apparently. This should indicate the profound effect Rawls's work has had on people concerned with ideas. And topics in Rawls's Theory are likely to appear in future posts here at Ideas Matter.
In the first part of this video, Hayek and Buchanan suggest Rawls's Theory of Justice - in its earlier form (a series of academic articles) - was not only more clear-cut, but less egalitarian. Both Hayek and Buchanan think that the egalitarian features of the book would be difficult or impossible to implement. This is a point Robert Nozick runs with in his Anarchy, State and Utopia. As any libertarian can tell you, even milder egalitarian forms such as Rawls's require constant interference by the state in our lives--given that egalitarian outcomes are neither the 'natural' nor the emergent states-of-affairs when human beings interact. As Nozick says: liberty "upsets patterns."
Less theoretically, however, the conversation turns to the very idea of "social justice." Hayek concludes that the term - while it elicits some emotional response - doesn't really mean anything. At least most who employ the term are unable to use it meaningfully.
Since Rawls, some contemporary advocates of so-called social justice would appeal directly to Rawls's work to bring some justification/definition to the term. But as elegant a theory as Rawls's Theory is, it suffers in a number of very serious ways that some very smart people have spent the latter part of the twentieth century unpacking (including Buchanan).
So does the term social justice have meaning? I'd venture to say that it's vagueness has allowed it to be successful in a marketing sense. (Good meming.) Appeals to the work of communitarians may suffice -- but it is interesting that most communitarian work emerged right around the time (or after) this video was being filmed. That suggests to me that "social justice" was a term in search of a theory. (And, therefore, it may still be.)
Comments