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Liberal Moralism and Modus Vivendi Politics
Abstract
Much of the recent work on modus vivendi politics has come from writers who are broadly sympathetic to the realist critique of liberal moralism. They present modus vivendi politics as an alternative to the political moralism that is associated with liberal Anglo-American philosophers such as John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin. This chapter argues that the opposition between these two sets of views—liberal moralism and modus vivendi politics—has been misconceived. On the one hand, it argues that liberal moralists have failed both to accurately characterize and to adequately appreciate the importance of modus vivendi arrangements for political order. On the other hand, it argues that realist critics of liberal moralism have generally failed to appreciate the extent to which an adequate defense of a modus vivendi arrangement presupposes commitment to moral principles of the sort defended by liberal moralists. After advancing these two lines of criticism, the chapter takes a more constructive turn and discusses the notion of a moralized modus vivendi, explaining how this notion draws on ideas from both liberal moralism and modus vivendi political theory. The possibility of a moralized modus vivendi, the chapter concludes, illustrates not only the compatibility but also the integration of liberal moralism and modus vivendi politics.
... Modus vivendi liberalism (Gray 2000;McCabe 2010) presents the modus vivendi as an avenue toward the liberal value of pluralism. Other modus vivendi theorists promote values like peace (Wendt 2019) or political acceptability (Wall 2019), presenting these as distinct from Rawls's core values but complementary to liberal ends (see also, Sala 2019). Realist accounts of the modus vivendi pursue values external to the liberal project, such as managing political conflict (Horton 2011) or securing political survival (Fossen 2019). ...
John Rawls characterizes political rationality as narrowly self-regarding and therefore incapable of motivating political other-regard, self-moderation, or cooperative behavior. He ascribes these cooperative properties solely to reasonable, or principled, reasoning. This article evaluates Rawls’s account of rationality by investigating his characterization of the democratic modus vivendi, which builds upon this account: Rawls asserts that the democratic modus vivendi is inherently unstable because it lacks the cooperative properties of the reasonable. These critiques entail positive claims about rational democratic equilibrium that are contradicted by formal accounts of self-enforcing democracy. The article demonstrates that the democratic modus vivendi can achieve robust stability because the rational can express the cooperative properties that Rawls reserves to the reasonable. By working within Rawls’s seminal account of political reasoning to revise the properties he ascribes to rationality, this article offers a novel motivation for theoretical engagement with the rational and its role in political cooperation.
Despite the importance of the requirement that all parties subject to a modus vivendi accept it, the philosophical basis of the all-subjected principle has been largely neglected in the realist literature on modus vivendi arrangements as responses to disagreements on issues of common concern. In this article, I argue that the inclusion of all-subjected parties should be understood as instrumental to justifying the presupposition that enough parties will have the motivation to comply with an arrangement that they grudgingly accept as a modus vivendi. I also argue that without accepting the democratic commitments implicit in the acceptance of the standard reading of the all-subjected principle, realist modus vivendi theorists should demonstrate that all those parties who are subjected to a modus vivendi arrangement have the capacity to voice their objection and to be heard for such a claim.
In this chapter, I tackle a deficit of current modus vivendi theory, namely its neglect of institutions. Modus vivendi theorists have good reason to get beyond this position and show how the notion of modus vivendi politics can be made use of for considerations about institutional design. First, I argue that two features of modus vivendi enable critical assessments of institutional design: modus vivendi arrangements are supposed to reflect the plurality of views on disputed issues and find the acceptance of those who are subject to the arrangement in question. Second, I apply these criteria of modus vivendi to recent institutional innovations that have been implemented in order to strengthen the capacity of pluralist democracies to deal with deep disagreements: (a) the release of parliamentarians’ duty to vote in line with their parliamentary groups and the establishment of (b) ethics councils and (c) mini-publics. The requirements of modus vivendi politics enable both a critique of these institutions and the development of alternative designs. I make an exemplar case for this claim by sketching a fourth possible institutional innovation: flexible negotiating forums.
In this paper I seek to explore how the idea of modus vivendi might help us to understand political legitimacy. A suitable conception of modus vivendi, I suggest, can represent a way of underpinning a viable and attractive account of political legitimacy. On my account a modus vivendi is basically a set of arrangements that are accepted as basis for conducting affairs by those who are party to them. Political legitimacy, I argue, is ultimately rooted in the judgements of those subject to it, but is mediated through a language in which claims to it are argued and assessed. The thought is that the web of operative beliefs and values in any given society, which constitute the grounds of judgements about political legitimacy, are what sustains a modus vivendi around the basic political institutions and practices. On this view, legitimate political institutions and practices incline towards a modus vivendi in that they are the outcome of an historical and ongoing conglomeration of settlements reflecting shifting and conflicting values and interests, as well relative balances of power, both currently and in the past. The marriage of modus vivendi and political legitimacy, therefore, seeks to reflect the contingent and ‘negotiated’ character of basic political institutions and practices and an understanding of political legitimacy that sees it as mediated through an ongoing and emergent discourse of argument and judgement, which remains nonetheless always vulnerable to challenge and change.
There have been four main motives to introduce the notion of modus vivendi in the political-philosophical literature. One is to use it as a negative contrast to what one regards as the ideal goal in politics. The second is to use it within a distinctively realist political theory that refrains from advocating utopian ideals. The third is to defend liberal institutions as a modus vivendi. The fourth is to have a concept for the institutional tools for peace. Depending on the motive to introduce the notion of modus vivendi, the notion is conceptualized slightly differently. One aim of the chapter is to provide an overview of the different motives that have led theorists to think about modus vivendi and the different conceptualizations of modus vivendi they have offered. But the chapter also makes a more substantial point: it argues that we should conceptualize the notion of modus vivendi in line with the fourth motive, because this seems the most promising way to get a conception of modus vivendi that is both “deeply motivated” and “open” for all kinds of approaches in political theory.
The double thesis sketched in broad strokes in this essay will be that modus vivendi conceptions do not qualify as viable alternatives to political liberalism. In order to be normatively plausible, modus vivendi conceptions depend on a (politically) liberal framework and on the normative reasoning justifying it. Within such a liberal framework, however, modus vivendi theory and modus vivendi institutions are necessary. Modus vivendi theory is analysed to be a normatively inconsistent approach that cannot be successful in its attempt to undermine liberalism’s aspiration to occupy a privileged normative position vis-à-vis other kinds of regimes. Pluralist theories of the modus vivendi kind, dissociating themselves from normative individualism which takes individuals as the core elements of the political and legal processes, are in danger of destroying the very base of a sound political idea of pluralism. The essay especially questions how much realism is found in the “realist turn” in recent political theory, of which the modus vivendi approach is part, given systematic underestimation of the legal system in modus vivendi theorizing.
This chapter presents an overview on the current debate on modus vivendi theorising and makes selective use of the arguments developed in the subsequent chapters to show how this book contributes to it. First, modus vivendi is defined as an arrangement that enables political cooperation in the face of conflict, which can be supported for moral and non-moral reasons and is shaped by the specific context from which it emerges. Second, it is shown that those who make modus vivendi a central concept of their political theorising include both liberal and realist theorists: while liberals use it to reinterpret the liberal project, realists aim to make it the basis of a distinctive form of political theorising that avoids the “moralising” tendencies of much of current liberal political theorising. This chapter discusses in more detail the latter project and shows, third, how realists have worked towards a political theory of modus vivendi by defining standards of legitimacy that are less idealised. However, there are two important criticisms. Some question whether realist accounts of legitimacy differ significantly from “liberal moralism”. Others argue that these accounts express an uncritical view towards domination. Finally, the chapter sketches some proposals for the further developments of modus vivendi theorising that are discussed in this book. One is to focus more explicitly on the circumstances and practices of modus vivendi politics. Another is to make sense of the normative implications of modus vivendi in novel ways.
This article sets out some of the key features of a realist critique of liberal moralism, identifying descriptive inadequacy and normative irrelevance as the two fundamental lines of criticism. It then sketches an outline of a political theory of modus vivendi as an alternative, realist approach to political theory. On this account a modus vivendi should be understood as any political settlement that involves the preservation of peace and security and is generally acceptable to those who are party to it. In conclusion, some problems with this conception of modus vivendi and with a realist political theory more generally are discussed. In particular, the question is raised of whether a realist political theory should be understood as an alternative to liberal moralism or only a better way of doing basically the same kind of thing.
This book explores, within a liberal framework, the nature, significance, and justification of political freedom or liberty. Against recent liberal positions, it is argued that political morality is neither rights‐based, nor equality‐based. What underlies rights, and the value of freedom, is a concern with autonomy. Autonomy requires, among other things, that individuals have an array of valuable options to choose from. The realm of values is marked by pluralism, incommensurability, and a dependence on social forms. Individualism is rejected and the importance of collective goods is given due emphasis. Though it is often assumed that liberal states must be committed to neutrality about valuable options, it is contended here that a concern with autonomy is perfectly consistent with perfectionism. The book also contains an extensive discussion of the connection between freedom and political authority.
A central task in contemporary political philosophy is to identify principles governing political life where citizens disagree deeply on important questions of value and, more generally, about the proper ends of life. The distinctively liberal response to this challenge insists that the state should as far as possible avoid relying on such contested issues in its basic structure and deliberations. David McCabe critically surveys influential defenses of the liberal solution and advocates modus vivendi liberalism as an alternative defense of the liberal state. Acknowledging that the modus vivendi approach does not provide the deep moral consensus that many liberals demand, he defends the liberal state as an acceptable compromise among citizens who will continue to see it as less than ideal. His book will interest a wide range of readers in political philosophy and political theory.
The political philosophy of liberalism was first formulated during the Enlightenment in response to the growth of the modern nation-state and its authority and power over the individuals living within its boundaries. Liberalism is now the dominant ideology in the Western world, but it covers a broad swathe of different (and sometimes rival) ideas and traditions and its essential features can be hard to define. The Cambridge Companion to Liberalism offers a rich and accessible exploration of liberalism as a tradition of political thought. It includes chapters on the historical development of liberalism, its normative foundations, and its core philosophical concepts, as well as a survey of liberal approaches and responses to a range of important topics including freedom, equality, toleration, religion, and nationalism. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in political philosophy, political theory, and the history of political thought.
The book is in three parts. The first part discusses the nature of contributory reasons, set in the more general context of normative theory. It introduces and defends a distinction between reasons and enabling conditions, and considers some other roles that considerations that are morally relevant but not reasons might play. It also asks which meta-ethical positions have the tools necessary to capture the role of contributory reasons. The second part uses these results to argue for holism in the theory of reasons, and to construct an argument from that holism to particularism in ethics, which is characterised as the view that moral thought and judgement in no way depend on a suitable provision of moral principles. There is also a chapter on the epistemology of moral reasons, from a particularist point of view. The third part is concerned with the theory of value, in particular with a form of holism there which is analogous to holism in the theory of reasons. There is a final chapter on holism in the theory of choice.
This paper presents a way of thinking about how to respond to the pluralism of modern societies that avoids any commitment to contractualist norms of political justification. The argument developed appeals to the notion of a constitutional settlement. Constitutional settlements are complex on-going social practices that both express certain values to which political societies are committed and establish procedures for resolving disputes among members of these societies. As such, they are a product of both moral commitment and the balance of power. The paper shows how constitutional settlements relate to issues of stability and non-subjugation in politics, and explains how they can ground a distinction between justice and legitimacy.
Philosophy & Public Affairs 31.3 (2003) 211-245
In this article, I argue for a thesis, which I state in section d below, about the relationship between facts and normative principles (or, as I shall call them, for short, "principles"). A normative principle, here, is a general directive that tells agents what (they ought, or ought not) to do, and a fact is, or corresponds to, any truth, other than (if any principles are truths) a principle, of a kind that someone might reasonably think supports a principle. Note that, under the foregoing stipulations, it is not excluded that normative principles might themselves be facts in a different sense of "fact" from that which is here stipulated. Principles might, that is, be facts in the broader sense of "fact" in which all truths, including, therefore, true principles (if there are any), represent facts. I myself believe that there exist true normative principles, but the thesis about principles and facts to be defended here is, as I shall explain at q below, neutral with respect to whether any normative principles are truths.
I shall also explain in q why the very little (almost nothing) that I just said about what constitutes a fact suffices for my demonstrative purposes. I am happy for facts to be whatever my opponents in this debate, whose position I shall presently describe, (reasonably) understand them to be: my argument, so I believe, is robust across permissible variations in the meaning of "fact," and it is also neutral across contrasting conceptions of the relationship of fact and value. Nor does my view about facts and principles, or so I argue at l below, require me to take a position on the famous question of whether an "ought" can follow from an "is." It bears emphasis that the question that my thesis answers is neutral with respect to controversies about the objectivity of principles, the relationship between facts and values, and the "is-ought" question, and, let me add for good measure, the realism/anti-realism/quasi-realism/a-little-bit-of-realism-here-not-so-much-realism-there controversy. The question pursued here is distinct from those that dominate the meta-ethical literature, and, so far as I know, it is hardly discussed in that literature. You will inevitably misunderstand me if you assimilate the thesis I shall state to one within those familiar controversies.
The independent status of the issue canvassed here in relation to long-standing controversies makes the present discussion less interesting than it otherwise might be, in that it has a limited effect on those popular philosophical controversies, but also in one way more interesting than it otherwise might be, in that it addresses a relatively novel and, I think, consequential issue, an issue which philosophers don't argue about much, but about which most of them, either spontaneously or when appropriately provoked, display strongly opposed and unargued views, which each side finds obviously true: that circumstance suggests that there is something of a philosophical problem here, about which most philosophers are at least in part mistaken (because a view is unlikely to be obviously true if a goodly number of reflective thinkers believe it to be obviously false).
The thesis to be defended here contradicts what many people (and, I believe, most moral and political philosophers) are disposed to think, to wit, that our beliefs about matters of normative principle (including our beliefs about the deepest and most general matters of principle) should reflect, or respond to, truths about matters of fact: they should, that is,—this is how I am using "reflect" and "respond to"—include matters of fact among the grounds for affirming them. So, for example, many find it obvious that our beliefs about principles should reflect facts about human nature (such as the fact that human beings are liable to pain, or the fact that they are capable of sympathy for each other) and they also think that our beliefs about principles should reflect facts about human social organization (such as the tendency for people to encounter collective action problems, or for societies to be composed of individuals who have diverse interests, and...
Philosophers have long suspected that thought and discourse about what we ought to do differ in some fundamental way from statements about what is. But the difference has proved elusive, in part because the two kinds of statement look alike. Focusing on judgments that express decisions--judgments about what is to be done, all things considered--Allan Gibbard offers a compelling argument for reconsidering, and reconfiguring, the distinctions between normative and descriptive discourse--between questions of "ought" and "is."
Gibbard considers how our actions, and our realities, emerge from the thousands of questions and decisions we form for ourselves. The result is a book that investigates the very nature of the questions we ask ourselves when we ask how we should live, and that clarifies the concept of "ought" by understanding the patterns of normative concepts involved in beliefs and decisions.
An original and elegant work of metaethics, this book brings a new clarity and rigor to the discussion of these tangled issues, and will significantly alter the long-standing debate over "objectivity" and "factuality" in ethics.
Table of Contents:
I. Preliminaries
1. Introduction: A Possibility Proof
2. Intuitionism as Template: Emending Moore
II. The Thing to Do
3. Planning and Ruling Out: The "Frege-Geach" Problem
4. Judgment, Disagreement, Negation
5. Supervenience and Constitution
6. Character and Import
III. Normative Concepts
7. Ordinary Oughts: Meaning and Motivation
8. Normative Kinds: Patterns of Engagement
9. What to Say about the Thing to Do: The Expressivistic Turn and What it Gains Us
IV. Knowing What to Do
10. Explaining with Plans
11. Knowing What to Do
12. Ideal Response Concepts
13. Deep Vindication and Practical Confidence
14. Impasse and Dissent
References
Index
This is a remarkable book. It takes up a central and much-discussed problem - the difference between normative thought (and discourse) and "descriptive" thought (and discourse). It develops a compelling response to that problem with ramifications for much else in philosophy. But perhaps most importantly, it brings new clarity and rigor to the discussion of these tangled issues. It will take some time to come to terms with the details of Gibbard's discussion. It is absolutely clear, however, that the book will reconfigure the debate over objectivity and "factuality" in ethics.
--Gideon Rosen, Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
Gibbard,/author> writes elegantly, and the theory he develops is innovative, philosophically sophisticated, and challenging. Gibbard defends his theory vigorously and with admirable intellectual honesty.
--David Copp, Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
Are liberalism and perfectionism compatible? In this study Steven Wall presents and defends a perfectionist account of political morality that takes issue with many currently fashionable liberal ideas but retains the strong liberal commitment to the ideal of personal autonomy. He begins by critically discussing the most influential version of anti-perfectionist liberalism, examining the main arguments that have been offered in its defence. He then clarifies the ideal of personal autonomy, presents an account of its value and shows that a strong commitment to personal autonomy is fully compatible with an endorsement of perfectionist political action designed to promote valuable pursuits and discourage base ones.
Political political theory: An inaugural lecture
- J Waldron