As this
year comes to an end and as our country readies for a peaceful transition of
power from a Democratic President to a Republican President, we would each do
well to consider why we continue to try to live peaceably with one
another. Even under conditions of
deep-seated (racial, ethnic, political, religious, gender) distrust among and
between people, we continue to try to live peaceably and to cooperate with one
another other. Why? If we cannot trust one another, why not
simply disband?
Political
philosophers have labored over this problem by asking why we should band
together in the first place, even under conditions of distrust. One justification
for the state and for law is that, without an enforcement mechanism, such as
the State, people would not be secure in their person or possessions and could
not trust others to work toward common goals or ventures. Civil society has
long been considered people’s refuge from a solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and
short life found in the state of nature. Thomas Hobbes held that the state of
nature is an anarchic condition that breeds and encourages antipathy. Rights do
not exist in this condition because everything is up for grabs—the greatest
claim to things, including life, is determined by might, wit and cunning.
Culture and industry are impossible.
Hobbes
posited that individuals in this anarchic condition who wish to cooperate with
others and coordinate conduct toward common ends could hardly trust others to
perform absent some enforcement mechanism—without, that is, an authority,
specifically an absolute monarch, with power to make nonperformance more costly
than performance. With enforcement in place, cooperation and coordination
become possible. Rationally self-interested persons would choose to take their
chances in civil society, even under absolute (perhaps despotic) monarchy, over
an unstable state of nature.
John
Locke subsequently challenged two major premises in Hobbes’ philosophy: (1) the
idea that there are no such things as rights in the state of nature, and (2)
that an absolute monarchy is compatible with civil society. For Locke, each
individual is unquestionably endowed with reason, will, and natural rights.
Locke’s state of nature is not a war of all against all. Rather, it is a
condition best described as a near-tolerable anarchy, where people are without
a common superior. Reason and tolerance are the rule rather than exception. The
individual has a right to defend her life and her possessions. Her possessions
are merely extensions of her labor. Her labor is merely an extension of
herself.
Like
Hobbes, Locke considered government necessary, but not because it was the only
way to ensure cooperation and coordination among persons. Because individuals
are ruled by reason, people enjoy compossible rights (if B cannot sacrifice A
as a means to B’s end, A cannot impose her end on B to achieve A’s end).
Recognizing this, people are willing and eager to enter cooperative ventures.
But something like Hobbes’ war of all against all arises because every person
becomes judge in her own case, no one having greater rights than, or claim to
authority over, any other person. Legal institutions become necessary to fairly
adjudicate disputes concerning competing rights and define the contours of
those rights as a means to foster stability and certainty in people’s
interactions with one another.
At the
heart of political society for Locke lies the social contract. “The only way
anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil
society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community for
their comfortable, safe, and peaceable living one amongst the other. . . .” All
members seek to preserve their life and property by entering civil society.
Absolute monarchy is antithetical to a free and equal society because an
absolute monarch would be judge and enforcer in his or her own case, thus
placing him or her in a state of nature with others.
People
enter a social contract by voluntarily consenting to enter civil society—by
making a promise. Locke did not flesh out how one logically derives a moral
obligation that motivates him or her to act on or keep a promise. Locke just
considered it natural that one should keep her word. Immanuel Kant filled this
gap.
Kant,
like Hobbes, held that moral principles could derive from practical reason.
Unlike Hobbes, however, Kant held that moral principles could derive from
reason apart from self-interest. Morality is not result oriented for Kant. A
moral act is one that is good in itself.
Practical
reason generates reasons for action, which do not depend on what one desires or
how one feels. For Kant, the categorical imperative generates inescapable moral
duties, moral oughts, that people are compelled to act on. Duty is the
necessity of an action from respect of law. “Respect of law” is not the source
of one’s motive to act, but merely a consequence of the motive. When you see
that you have a duty to keep your promise, for example, that rational
recognition that you are subject to this requirement produces a feeling of
respect for the law derived from reason.
There
is a single categorical imperative: “act only in accordance with that maxim
through which you can at the same time will that it become universal law.” If
one posits the maxim, “I will break my promise because I feel like it,” he or
she could hardly imagine a universally recognized rule that states “let
everyone break his or her promise whenever he or she feels like it.” A promise
has no meaning under such a maxim. Therefore, one has a duty not to act under
the maxim.
Even
were one convinced that he could universalize the maxim, he would find a
contradiction in his will. Kant’s contradiction-in-the-will test requires one
to hypothetically—not actually, so as to avoid tying one’s motive to a
result—ask whether he could will a world in which people are permitted to break
a promise for any reason. No person could rationally will such a world, because
he could not rely on any person’s word and no one could rely on his. One has a
duty, again, not to act under the maxim.
When a
person subjects her maxims to the categorical imperative, she gives law to
herself insofar as she checks her actions against a self-imposed normative
posture that itself considers the impact of her action, hypothetically, on
others. The most salient aspect of Kant’s philosophy lies in its consequence as
a matter of practical reason: that rational nature exists as an end in itself.
And, therefore, human beings as rational agents ought to be treated as ends in
themselves and never as a means.
Lockean
political philosophers, Robert Nozick particularly, employ Kant’s moral
philosophy to account for Locke’s gap between promise and obligation. The idea
of self-ownership treats each individual as an end who rightfully determines
the course of conduct most conducive to her own life and well-being. As a
corollary, it follows that no person can be used as a means to another’s end,
otherwise rights between individuals would be incompossible. Promises are to be
kept under this logic because to renege would be to use the promise to achieve
the promisor’s ends without the reciprocation envisioned in a contract toward
common ends.
Hobbes
and Locke share the view that persons can be placed in a state of nature
situation in civil society. When, for example, the enforcement branch of
government places the citizen’s life in danger, the instinct to preserve one’s
life (on Hobbes’ account) or the natural right to preserve one’s life (on
Locke’s account) kicks in.
What
about when virtue amongst the citizenry is lost? When citizens do not trust one
another? When citizens employ law as a tool to disadvantage other citizens?
When citizens use law enforcement as a means to their own ends, ends that do
not have the public good in mind, but personal gain? For Hobbes, rational
self-interest may counsel one to treat others as in a state of nature. For
Locke, and considering Kant’s categorical imperative, a promise has been
broken, the social contract, that is, has been impugned.
If we
cannot count on a minimum amount of civic virtue among the citizenry, how can
we trust one another? If we cannot trust one another, what reason has anyone to
yield to or respect laws enacted by others, especially laws enacted by an
opposing party in the majority? If we cannot trust law enforcement officials to
exercise restraint and respect toward people generally, what reason has anyone
to yield to or respect law enforcement officials, who are also citizens? If law
enforcement officials cannot trust that citizens will generally cooperate and
abide official rules or orders, what reason has any law enforcement official to
show respect for citizens generally? or to exercise restraint when enforcing
the law? Are we together in civil
society or at its precipice, overlooking and stepping closer to a state of
nature?
Well, we
do not kill each other in droves. Apparently, we want to trust each other. The whole of human history is an account of
ceaseless attempts to live sociably with one another. Now is the time to create
an open dialogue on every and any issue—whether race, gender, sexuality, or
anything else—in which every person participates.
Disagreements
will arise; disagreement is inevitable. But disagreement, alone, is not a reason to
distrust others or to cut-off further discussion. A selective ‘taken-for-granted’ or ‘taken-as-given’
ripens into incivility. But civility is exactly what is needed to resolve our
disagreements. Civility is possible only when persons within a circumscribed
polity are willing to take each other’s concerns, beliefs, and ideas seriously,
which requires an effort to understand those concerns, beliefs, and ideas on
their own terms and not only for the sake of dismissing or refuting them, and
never for the sake of demeaning them.
Let us
enter 2017 with optimism, a willingness to cooperate with one another, and to
disagree in good faith when necessary, and a commitment to reduce our deficit of
trust.
