On Escaping Our Gated Community

Rawls himself said in the opening pages of “A Theory of Justice” that we had to start with ideal theory because it was necessary for properly doing the really important thing: non-ideal theory, including the “pressing and urgent matter” of remedying injustice. But what was originally supposed to have been merely a tool has become an end in itself; the presumed antechamber to the real hall of debate is now its main site. Effectively, then, within the geography of the normative, ideal theory functions as a form of white flight. You don’t want to deal with the problems of race and the legacy of white supremacy, so, metaphorically, within the discourse of justice, you retreat from any spaces worryingly close to the inner cities and move instead to the safe and comfortable white spaces, the gated moral communities, of the segregated suburbs, from which they become normatively invisible.--Charles Mills in the New York Times.

When I was a student and graduate student such a functional analysis of debates within philosophy of the sort Prof. Mills provides was, well, strictly off-limits. So, I was pleased to see it shared approvingly by so many folk that I admire and respect. For philosophy to properly understand itself and the places -- metaphorical and physical -- it occupies and leaves empty, the 'effective' consequences of our conceptual moves need to be made available for discussion. 

In his comments, Prof. Mills is very careful to distinguish between Rawls's original intent and what happens in that most important no-place: "the geography of the normative." He does not explain the causal factors that might have facilitated the 'retreat.' And normally  this would be the place where I would talk about incentives and institutions, and deepen my argument about why Rawls's  technocratic political ideal -- and perhaps also the very idea of a neutral, formal language -- was so attractive to many (recall). But in re-reading the interview with  Prof. Mills I noted that he is very explicit about one feature of the agency of professional philosophers; he writes, "You don’t want to deal with the problems of race and the legacy of white supremacy."

Now, I take it that Prof. Mills is not merely offering a psychological diagnosis about individuals, but, rather, offering the claim that professional (political) philosophy has evolved in such a way as not being capable -- de facto -- of practicing certain important forms of philosophical inquiry; it allows the proliferation of disciplinary "norms of cognition that so function as to work against successful cognition."* These norms also facilitate the further entrenchment of certain forms of social injustice -- victims are further made cognitively invisible (recall this post).

For the nobler among us the pull of "correcting injustices" is, perhaps, large enough to follow Prof. Mills and "exit Rawlsland." But I also note that Prof. Mills leaves the rest of us an additional argument (no, I don't mean that gated communities filled with the like-minded are very boring places); rather, he promises us better access to a more "realistic perspective" on social reality--one in which our cognition has a better chance of not being (too) empty.

 

 

*I added 'disciplinary,' but that is justified by Mill's claim about the "bizarre way it has developed since Rawls (a bizarreness not recognized as such by its practitioners because of the aforementioned norms of disciplinary socialization)."

Comments

[Enzo Rossi]

Restorative justice is discussed at length by Nozick, among others. And I mention Nozick because, methodologically, I think he has been even more influential than Rawls (esp. the method of part 2 of ASU). Also, restorative justice theory can be both ideal or nonideal. There is a sizeable contemporary literature on restorative justice. But Mills is right that it's mostly ideal theory. So maybe he's recommending that we pursue non-ideal restorative justice. However, as I tried to say in a comment at DN, the ideological worries he has in mind won't go away if we continue to do mainstream political philosophy, because of the "ethics-first" approach condemns even nonideal restorative justice theory to the risk of unexamined ideological biases.