Subject: BHA: Flourishing, Aristotle, rights
Date: Thu, 6 Nov 2003 11:00:48 -0500



Hi Howard,

I think that Marx is on the right track in getting after Hegel for getting stuck on private property, but I am not convinced that he got far enough beyond Hobbes' formulation of the problem of social order.  Is it possible that this is behind what you call the radical individualism of "emancipation"?

You wrote:

"For marx flourishing is about wealth and wealth is about developing our capacities as individuals -- I agree with the thrust of Mervyn's comment on
this: there is a radical individualist thread to human emancipation."

[snip] . . .

"Thus in the Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx says the goal is a set of social arrangements where "labor is life's prime need" -- the complete unfolding of capacities and potentialities.  This is the context for "from each according to ability, to each according to need," the standard which supercedes the narrow limits of bourgeois right."

I reply:

This complete unfolding is still of individually conceived capacities and potentialities, and the "from each/to each" formula might supercede the limits of "bourgeois right," but I am not convinced that it supercedes the limits of Hobbesian/Utilitarian individualism.  For example, you wrote:

'Marx says (wryly), "This much, at least, is evident: the individual cannot maintain himself against the will of another individual, who likewise wants to become a real individual by virtue of the same strip of land."'

"So there's liberal political theory's problem -- the circle to be squared."

I reply:

This is the problem Hobbes solved by positing a social contract.  But Durkheim's arguments for pre-contractual solidarity are quite persuasive.  Furthermore, in Durkheim's thought, this pre-contractual solidarity is consolidated through rituals.  He focused upon religious rituals, but Erving Goffman has developed this idea much further in his treatment of everyday interaction rituals.  Pre-contractual solidarity is necessary to establish the social conditions necessary for individuals to be willing to enter into contracts.  Right-duty relationships are articulated by the terms of contracts, so what kind of relationships might we call "pre-right-duty relationships"?

One such relationship might be that of reciprocal trust, arising out of the ritually confirmed sentiment that we both are "deep" members of the same community, meaning that we define who we are, at the core of our being, in terms of our identification with that community.

In response to the objection that this is an "irrational" sentiment, I argue that such sentiments are the precondition of both "rational" thought and "rational" contracts.

Best regards,

Dick


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