Two Conceptions of Fairness

Abstract

VEIT BADER' S RICH AND COMPLEX essay illustrates the virtues of a comparative and contextual approach to political theory. His references to the institutions and practices of many different liberal democratic states play a key role in his theoretical argument and provide a useful corrective to theories constructed with a more limited set of examples in mind. I applaud Bader's efforts to find a middle way between an abstract universalism that neglects the role of national identity and culture in realizing and reproducing any concrete liberal democratic political order and a complacent communitarianism that ignores the exclusionary effects of allowing political identities, institutions, and practices to be shaped unduly by the dominant culture in a particular state. In this brief response, I will try to clarify and extend Bader's analysis. My central claim is that Bader's discussion reflects a productive ambivalence between two different views of what requires with respect to national identity and culture: (1) an ideal of neutrality compatible only with thin forms of identity and culture and (2) an ideal of evenhandedness, compatible with much thicker versions of identity and culture. Since the appearance of A Theory of Justice, the phrase justice as has conjured up the idea that to treat people fairly, we must regard people abstractly, taking into account only generic human interests (such as primary goods) rather than particular identities and commitments. This conception of fairness is closely associated with the view that the liberal state ought to be neutral between competing conceptions of the good. There is another conception of as fairness, however, that is derived from the assumption that to treat people fairly, we must regard them concretely, with as much knowledge as we can obtain about who they are and what they care