Justice and Aristotelian Practical Reason

Abstract

Whose Justice? Which Rationality? maintains that the central questions of moral and political philosophy can be settled only from the standpoint of a philosophical tradition. The truths about justice are those that accord with a successful tradition, one that can solve all the problems raised by its external and internal critics and explain the plausibility and mistakes of its rivals. Professor MacIntyre supports this claim by arguing that there is no tradition-neutral conception of practical rationality that can be used to settle disputes about justice. Through an examination of four philosophical traditions, he argues that the conception of justice of each is linked to its own theory of practical rationality. Although MacIntyre's historical brand of holism may turn out to be correct, I do not think that his arguments are sufficient to support it. As MacIntyre's own practice reveals, an Aristotelian conception of practical reason can support more than an Aristotelian conception of justice. In pursuing this criticism I shall take Aristotelian justice and practical reason to be as MacIntyre describes them. Aristotelian justice focuses on treating people as they deserve to be treated, desert being determined by the extent to which people achieve excellence across a range of activities, many of which are tied to social roles. These activities and their virtues are hierarchically ordered by a shared conception of the best life, one that if expressed in a constitution would define the best polis. There are three aspects to Aristotelian practical reason-a dialectical apprehension of the ends that constitute the best life, a determination of more specific goods based on an understanding of the best life supplemented by experience in the complexities of human life, and an ability to perceive situations in which these goods can be achieved. Correct exercise of practical reason arises through the kind of social education that allows one to acquire virtue.