Your Humble Blogger is back from vacation, so to ease back into this Tohu Bohu, let's return to everyone's favorite, the Conservative Tenets. For any of my Gentle Readers who have joined me in the past six weeks or so, or have forgotten what I was on about, this is a list of things Conservatives believe, taken from Clinton Lawrence Rossiter's Conservatism in America, (New York: Knopf © 1955), "The Conservative Tradition", pp. 61-62. Mr. Rossiter did not intend the list to be a checklist test of faith; in fact he considers Conservatism to be more a mindset, or a bias, than a set of policy positions or a consistent philosophy. However, Your Humble Blogger was intrigued by the list, and is using it as a set of Thinking Points, to ascertain which I agree with, and what they mean.
All of that said, we are up to:
16. The existence of immutable principles of universal justice.
Holy Kohlberg! Immutable principles of universal justice!
Well, and I don't think that I find anything immutable or universal. Or at least, I don't have confidence in anything or anyone's immutability or universality. Not that I fall all the way into the relativist camp, either; I just only get as far as those principles which are relatively immutable and relatively universal.
What does that mean? Well, I suppose it means that I consider principles to be guidelines; shortcuts to get to an answer in complex situations (and all situations are complex). In addition to having those principles (which I understand to be things such as freedom of speech and of assembly, equality of antecedent burdens and benefits, democratic governance, separation of church and state, etc.), it is important to have a sort of hierarchy, in order to weigh principles one against the other, as they apply to an individual situation.
That, then, is where I have trouble with immutability and universality. I believe that it's important to have principles of justice, and to define them as best you can, so that when it comes to judging an actual situation, you have good rules to follow. However, the actual situation is bound to be infinitely complicated. If the principles are held to be immutable, the application of those principles must be infinitely mutable. Which is OK.
There's a much-quoted line from Gaudy Night which has Lord Peter saying "the first thing a principle does—if it really is a principle—is to kill somebody." I don't agree with that sentiment, but it seems to me that it is easier to hold on to principles, believing that they are immutable, than to perceive the complicated universe. I will do that easier thing when I need to, as I often do. The problem is when you stop trying to perceive the complicated universe, and the people that muddle their way through it. That's when your principles start killing people. That's why believing in immutable principles of universal justice is a scary sort of habit to get into.
Redintegro Iraq,
-V.
This tenet seems to a case that supports some psych research (?aggregate data?) from UC Berkeley. The psych traits they find include “resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality”. The one that connects well to folks I know are “uncertainty avoidance” and the “need for cognitive closure”. A belief in steadfast, immutable principles supports those psychological desires.
I wonder what this means about child rearing.
Erm. Now I’m looking at your Kohlberg link. Hurm.
I find it interesting that Rossiter advances the ideas that inequalities are natural (tenet 2), that “the rights of man are earned rather than given” (tenet 8) but that principles of justice are universal and immutable.
These tenets seem to me to be logically contradictory. How, if inequality is natural and rights vary from man to man, can principles of justice be universal and immutable? But I suppose that’s because I see principles like “equality before the law” and “laws should safeguard inalienable human rights” as immutable principles of justice. But if these aren’t the immutable principles of justice, what are these principles? Rossiter refers to them, but he doesn’t name them.
So, I’m in agreement with the idea that there are a few universal principles of justice (which have to be applied in an unlimitable variety of ways for them to lead to just practices, of course), but it seems to me that Rossiter’s other tenets, if accepted, would abrogate this one.
I suppose Rossiter might argue that natural inequality is neither just nor unjust, and that it is in tension with universal principles of justice, and he might argue that universal principles of justice can acknowledge the extent of the rights earned by each particular person, but I don’t think I find that sort of argument persuasive.