Icelandic Strip Clubs

Recently, Iceland banned strip clubs.  In response, I posted that link on facebook, along with the message:

 ”I almost wrote that I had ‘mixed feelings’ on this, but then I thought for 3.5 more seconds…and decided my feelings weren’t mixed at all.  I’m in favor.  Well done, Iceland.”

This immediately gave rise to a lively debate, which was inexpressibly helpful, interesting, and clarificatory.  With the contibutors’ permission, I’ve reproduced the conversation in full. Given that this took place on facebook, please forgive any expressive laxity, including mistakes in spelling, grammar, or any unsettling casualness of tone.

 

Justin Bernstein

Really? I don’t go to strip clubs, but i’m not sure what could justify this violation of citizens’ basic liberties–i.e. those of the strippers. 

 

Raleigh Miller

i’m prepared to be talked out of this, but my initial idea is something like this:  The moral costs of allowing an institution that systematically and inevitably breeds sexual exploitation, and whose employees are often only voluntary participants in the sense that they could voluntarily allow themselves and their children to go without food [prostitution is an even more vivid example of this latter sort of institution, but I think strip clubs are a milder version of the same thing] are higher than the moral costs of denying a particular species of economic freedom to those who are genuinely volunteering to take their clothes off for money.

 

Raleigh Miller 

BTW, non-uniqueness arguments (that if I take ’sexual’ out of the description, I’ve basically got a description of capitalism) will be acknowledged, and absorbed.

 

 Lindsey Lovel 

I totally disagree. This seems to not only assume that strippers and sex workers are victims but also that these institutions are morally reprehensible. Although it seems this is undeniably the case for some women, every stripper I have known (which is more than I care to admit) not only do not see themselves as victims, but take a certain amount of pride in their work (an argument based on the idea that it is not the women themselves that are being exploited as much as the men who shell out the cash). Certainly, Raleigh, you have considered the “empowered sex worker” standpoint before. I see this as taking away a fundamental right of both women and men (as dancers and customers) far more than somehow empowering women. Thank you, Prime Minister, for saving women from themselves. What would they ever have done without you?!

 

Justin Bernstein 

1. I agree that in most cases stripping involves objectifying women, and as such I do not support it. That said, those are my moral views, and I think for reasons of political legitimacy, it’s best to keep the moral and the political separate (here I’m thinking of broadly Rawlsian political liberalism and the reasons for Rawls’s shift from comprehensive to political liberalism). I.E., it’s inappropriate for the government to enforce a particular comprehensive doctrine on its citizens. Making legislative decisions that infringe on the basic liberties on the basis of reducing moral costs seems like a form of coercion that does not respect citizens as free, equal, and autonomous. Instead, it seems like paternalism that relies on utilitarianism for its justification. And I’m pretty unsympathetic to both paternalism and utilitarianism.2. I think that if a woman has the choice between letting her children starve and prostitution/stripping, then that outlawing prostitution/stripping would deprive the woman of the necessary means for feeding her children. I think this economic issue would be handled if there just distributive policies in place, so women wouldn’t have to engage in prostitution/stripping out of economic necessity. In the meantime, however, it would seem that the government might be making it even more difficult for these women to make a living, and would ultimately be leaving them less in control of their own lives/less able to exercise their liberties/care for their families/etc. I don’t know if this is the case in Iceland specifically–my impression is that it’s a pretty egalitarian society and there isn’t too much poverty, but I don’t know enough about the facts on the ground to say this with much confidence3. Something interesting that Drucilla Cornell points out in “Freed Up: Privacy, Sexual Freedom, and Liberty of Conscience), many women use stripping, pornography, or prostitution as a means to pursuing a conception of the good that seems less morally problematic to those of us (like you and me) who find stripping to be degrading. In other words, some women have cited psychological rather than economic reasons in explaining why they engaged in such careers, and they have said after the fact that engaging in such careers were important for personal growth/development. 4. I suppose someone could make an argument concerning false consciousness with regard to my point in 3, although I think that concerns about false consciousness/overcoming can’t be handled by a government committed to individual liberties; the closest thing it can do is mandate public education that encourages citizens to regard themselves as free and equal . As such, it’s up to citizens to work to encourage individuals to value themselves/not internalize values that would lead to making life choices that we (correctly, I think) see as exploitative.Those are my two cents, but this is a really tricky issue…your thoughts?

 

Lucas Keefer 

Stripping doesn’t selectively objectify women, as men strip as well.Moreover, stripping doesn’t necessarily objectify people and more or less than any other economic relationship in which people are reduced to means for a consumer to get a product. The cog behind the cash register at the grocery store is as disvalued as the stripper, maybe even more so. At least the stripper has some individuality as artistic labor that is denied many other workers.The disanalogy for you to lean on, of course, is the sexual content of stripping. However, I see no reason to privilege any of a consumer’s desires as being more or less oppressive than any other, since the consequence of desire-pursuit will depend on systemic factors in the market, not on any facts about the consumers or the desires themselves.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Thank you so much for your thoughts everyone. I haven’t thought about all this stuff in a while, and it’s a useful topic to come back to now and again, to get one’s thoughts nice anc clear.From bottom to top.Lucas: It’s naive to say that the existence of male strippers means that the stripping profession isn’t ’selective’ in its gender distribution, isn’t it? I’m sure some white people failed literacy tests as well…that doesn’t mean that the oppression wasn’t selected or targeted. Next, of course I agree with you. Hence: “BTW, non-uniqueness arguments (that if I take ’sexual’ out of the description, I’ve basically got a description of capitalism) will be acknowledged, and absorbed.” But I think there are some asymmetries worth noting. It’s probably not worthwhile to construct or argue for a hierarchy of oppressions…but I think raping someone is worse than stealing from them. I think bodily integrity is of more pressing concern then economic integrity, though I surely hope we can work to ensure them both. I also think that, insofar as we can’t do everything at once, economic injustice that tracks obviously morally irrelevant features like sex, race, sexuality, etc., is a good place to start.Justin: I agree that this is a very tricky issue. The debate between feminists that would allow (and encourage!) the selling of sex, and virulent anti-porn feminism is lively and well worth hashing out. The former risks complacently allowing institutionally reified marginilization and oppression because of the superficial appearance of non-coercion or obscure conceptions of radical liberation that are surely not realized in the majority of the industry’s participants. The latter risks willy-nilly accusations that women are participating in their own oppression, to an absurd extent that could fall into Mackinnon-style all-sex-is-rape feminism. Both sides should be worried about their respective pitfalls. I started off saying that my first impulse was to have mixed reactions, and that I was willing to be talked out of this; right now I tend to think that anti-porn feminist socialism is the most correct position, but I’m not comfortable with all of the implications.False consciousness: I agree that arguments from false consciousness tend to recommend compromising individual liberties as conceived of by classical liberalism, and that such arguments are often speculative and unpersuasive. However, i think that (a) the fact that FC arguments can be misused doesn’t mean that they are always misled, (b) that FC is undisputably a real phenomenon,(c) that FC when it actually obtains is pernicious to the full realization of those very liberties, and (d) that this is what recommends a marxist approach to individual liberties over the classical liberal approach. So I agree that FC arguments carry risks, but I refuse to ban them from arguments about the proper role of government in regulating market activity. I simply think they should be used very carefully. I’m trying to be careful now…and the fact that I’m not sure if I’m being careful enough manifests in the lack of confidence that I’ve signaled in many places above.Socially Progressive Stripping: I do not deny that there are conceivable (and probably actual) moral costs to a ban on strip clubs. Saying ‘NO’ to the people you refer to in (3) looks to be such a moral cost. But I think (a) those costs are less than incurred by the existence of the institution as a whole. I recognize that my methodology is taking on a utilitarian flavor…and I don’t like that…but I think that one can make sense of ‘comparing moral costs’ without assuming a utilitarian calculus. And (b) I don’t know what the relevant ‘conception of the good’ is…but I wonder [very speculatively] if the effectiveness of stripping as a means of attaining it is conditioned by the society’s already objectifying and subordinating women, and that stripping is thus being wheeled into solve a problem that it is simultaneously instrumental in perpetuating.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Redistributive alternatives: This is a very interesting point, and it warrants being divided into two issues. First: there are many examples of socially harmful institutions that perpetuate themselves by providing sustenance for the very poorly off and the eradication of such institutions has the immediate effect of doing economic harm to the very people that were being singled out as victims in the first place. It’s very tricky what’s to be done in these situations, but surely you’d agree that if I can demonstrate that the institution is a social harm (and surely I haven’t yet done so, even to my own satisfaction!) then this would be a very bad reason to keep it in place. The better recourse would be to eliminate it and to take up the sustenance of those displaced as a separate problem to be fixed. Second: Should a sex industry be allowed in a completely economically just society, such that no one could rationally say “I’d rather not be a stripper, but I can’t afford to quit…”? It’s interesting here that Iceland is socialist (though I don’t know how well executed), so it’s plausibly the case that the Icelandic sex industry was far less rife with such economic coercion than, say, the United States sex industry is. I’m not sure what to say about this. I think if economic coercion could be eradicated, and a liberal education could be ensured, then the false consciousness argument begins to look less plausible. I still have a hunch that there is something going on here that ought not be going on…but I’m less sure what it is, and I may just be clinging to dogma.Rawlsian Liberalism: Here, Justin, you and I are just going to butt heads, I think. And to be fair, I should really read up on my Rawls before disagreeing with you. But my current position is that the overestimation of the extent to which individual liberty and autonomy is possible under late capitalism is responsible for coercion far worse than what is under consideration here. ‘Comprehensive doctrine’, ‘moral views’…all sorts of things can fall under these headings, and certainly some of them *are* the appropriate object of state regulation, advancement, or eradication. Showing that the marginalization that results from the sex industry is such an object is the task of the rest of the argument (and again, not accomplished even to my full satisfaction!), but it ought not be disregarded on the grounds that it could be described as the enforcement of a particular comprehensive doctrine; all sorts of not-obviously-unjust political systems could be so described.Lindsey: I very much feel the grip and appeal of your arguments…but I’m worried that every word could be appropriated to mount a defense of prostitution. Do you think the ban on prostitution is so politically offensive as Iceland’s ban on strip clubs? Many do, to be sure, but I think it’s more reasonable to see that unjust, oppressive social institions are entirely compatible with individual participants in those systems identifying with their labor and feeling entirely un-coerced. I think that broad-sweeping policies aimed to correct for systematic and institutional marginalization can often look absurd when considered on a very individual basis (affirmative action is an example). The justification for these policies is not that they decide in favor of the optimal state of affairs in every particular instance, but that they discourage or prohibit practices that, on the whole, perpetuate and reify the marginalization and subordination of non-dominant classes. Thanks again! Keep ‘em coming folks! I’m appreciating the opportunity to think through all of this. Anyone out there want to come to my defense? I know i’m fb friends with some anti-sex-industry feminists.

 

Lucas Keefer 

Right, my point about male stripping was simply that there was nothing intrinsic to stripping that was oppressive to women, and that if mores shifted, so would the oppressive facts about the institution. It was a softball into my point #2.Note also that stripping isn’t a violation of bodily integrity, so I don’t follow your point.If we want to deal with the oppression of an economic institution, banning it is too heavy handed. Regulation, e.g. strip clubs must be co-ops between the strippers who work there/stripper unions/etc., could achieve whatever moral problems that I, at least, have with strip clubs. Bonus: without the heavy handed political beatdown on individual liberty.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Wow…nice lucas. I actually like that suggestion. I still have problems…but I realized that articulating them would require my shifting dramatically in my argumentative strategy (pulling out critical feminist talking points about ‘the gaze’ and whatnot) or else turning to very practical, real-world arguments about how the current state of the US sex industry is beyond the reach of the suggestions you give (and in so doing I’d be changing the subject from the Icelandic ban, since I don’t know anything about their sex industry, and I’d also be relying on empirical speculations that I can’t back up).So well done. You may have just changed my mind a little bit.

 

Lucas Keefer 

I mean, it’s not like either of us has any stake in Icelandic strip clubs. Or…at least…not that I know about…

 

Raleigh Miller 

By the way, the suggestion that I liked was only the third… the regulatory ideas you floated. I do disagree with you about the other two claims. (1) When stripping for money ‘voluntarily’ is someone’s only way to escape economic ruin, or continuing to do so is the only way to avoid the underground intimidation tactics that can accompany the sexindustry, then bodily integrity is compromised. (2) The practices of male stripping and female stripping are not morally on a par. Similarly, black comedians making fun of white people is socially progressive; white comedians making fun of black people is racist. If your idea of ‘the mores shifting’ is an entire flip of sexual power-structures, then sure i’d agree with you, but if you just mean a situation where men stripped more regularly then women, but all other power structures remained in place, then no, I don’t think the situations are the same.

Lucas Keefer 

re 1: …but that’s the situation for all labor in a capitalist society. There’s nothing special about stripping that’s so much more compromising of bodily integrity than any other job. Unless you’ve got the hedonic calculus to show that exposing one’s body to others is necessarily MORE threatening to the individual’s bodily integrity than working at a factory and potentially being killed by a broken machine or working at a restaurant and possibly getting shot during a robbery/burned on an oven/etc., I’m not buying your point (and I am skeptical that from the armchair either you or I could offer such a calculus).re 2: Yeah, that’s what I mean. I deny the essentialist approach that stripping as economic activity is necessarily degrading to women. My claim is far more minimal than you think it is.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Hmmm…yeah I’m going to stick to my guns and say sexual bodily integrity is in a class of its own. Maybe that just means I’m fetishizing sex…hmmm…better way to say that?

 

Raleigh Miller 

but this is silly. I agree with you except that if I had to prioritize, I’d write a differently ordered list than you would. This is an unimportant disagreement.

 

Beth Younger 

Well, I think that you cannot or should not consider any of this without considering the social system under which all of this occurs–that is, patriarchy. So perhaps males stripping aren’t inherently more oppressed or in danger than women, but I think that is disingenuous and flawed thinking.The majority of rape survivors are female. The majority of victims of relationship violence are female. Men do NOT suffer the same consequences for exposing their bodies the way women do.Of course stripping and sex work are dangerous to women. Women are already second class citizens, and stripping plays into that paradigm. I don’t buy the argument that we’re protecting women from themselves–although I’m not sure banning strip clubs will help eliminate patriarchy. What needs to happen is systemic social change, not just the elimination of a few capiltal producing sexist institutions. I also don’t think that strippers are empowered–no matter what they say. They may feel that way, god bless ‘em, but they are still exploited. Part of the function of patriarchy is to have sexism so internalized that even oppressed sex workers feel empowered. That’s how it is entertwined with capitalism. I’m all for banning exploitation, but it can’t be done without a host of other measures.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Thanks Beth!So all the marxists in the room will agree that we should really just tear down the whole system…but insofar as the system stays largely how it is, what do you think Beth, Ban on strip clubs: good or bad?

 

Beth Younger 

If you insist, I guess I have to come down on the side of banning strip clubs. Even though it seems sort of condescending, what harm will it do? If somehow the employees of said clubs get education or training or job placement, I guess that would be good. I just think stripping is a stupid and truly meaningless activity, and does nothing good for anyone. I just wish the clubs would fade away by themselves.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Right… but of course something more than our mutual disapproval is required to mount a case for prohibition…

 

Beth Younger 

Too bad we don’t have magical powers!

 

Anna Lincoln Nicholas 

Hope you don’t mind my posting before reading most of the comments. While I used to assume the majority of strippers and sex workers were victims, I have a friend who’s extremely active in women’s rights organizations, etc, and he posted an interesting note/post to the contrary a couple months ago.

 

Raleigh Miller 

Hey Anna! I think this conversation has made clear that there are people everywhere on this issue. Some (who would be likely to call themselves sex-positive feminist, if they liked labels) might argue that stripping, pornography, sexual promiscuity, are all ways that women can own their sexuality and thus combat the alienating forces of patriarchy. These feminists would not be in favor of banning strip clubs. I think Lindsey would be happy to sign onto this, but she didn’t explicitly commit herself. in any event, many people I know do explicitly commit themselves to this, and your friend may put himself in this column.Then there’s a cluster of views that I might call the “nothing-special” opinion; that is, strip clubs are bad, but there’s nothing special about them that would justify a ban. my friend Justin, for instance, pretty clearly thinks that strip clubs are by and large a bad thing, but he probably also thinks that lots of things are bad, but he thinks it’s politically illegitimate to legislatively prohibit something that he thinks is bad. Where, Justin might ask, does the line get drawn? I think high fructose corn syrup is bad…should it be illegal? (full disclosure, high fructose corn syrup should be illegal).Another “nothing special” view thinks that the sex industry is a straight up, coercive, exploitative, and that its workers are victims of alienation and false consciousness. In this way, however, (so this view says) the sex industry is just like every other capitalist industry ever. My friend Lucas takes a view like this.The problem, according to this crazed socialist, is with capitalism simply, and there’s nothing about the sex industry that’s uniquely terrible. If anything, the latter is more explicit and vivid, and what we really ought to be working on is to make *as* explicit, and *as* vivid, the parallel modes of exploitation that are existent in other capitalist industries, rather than villifying the slices of capitalism that most people already know are bad while leaving untouched those sectors that do a better job of masking the social harm they do. (I’ve here put a *lot* of words in Lucas’s mouth…this paragraph should really be read as what I would want to say if I were to adopt Lucas’s view, which I’m at times inclined to do).Then there’s the anti-porn feminist. The anti-porn feminist says “all exploitation is bad, all should be ended, but there’s something uniquely bad about sexual exploitation (which is not to say *more* bad, just uniquely bad). Anti-porn feminism says that patriarchy and capitalism are interrelated modes of systematic exploitation, but that they are nonetheless different modes, and combating one is worthwhile in and of itself. The sex industry (as it currently exists? in principle?) is a straightforward manifestation of male domination that has a visceral and pernicious tendency to manufacture false consciousness among its victims, and to perpetuate itself through invisible (more underground, less transparent) and more damaging alienation then more run-of-the-mill capitalism, particularly in virtue of its perpetrating a more explicit and inescapable *bodily* alienation. The APF would agree with most of what Lucas says…but they would say ‘insofar as the rest of capitalism stays in place, it’s a very good thing that the sex industry be dismantled for distinctly feminist reasons, while Lucas would say that the dismantling of the sex industry, if its a good thing, is only good because of a repeated iteration of all of the reasons why various capitalist industries should be dismantled.My leanings are currently towards anti-porn feminism. Thus my congratulating Iceland on what I took to be a good decision. But all four of these, I think, are extremely plausible positions, and no one here is being ridiculous. In particular, I have been impressed by some of the pro-sex feminist arguments I’ve heard while arguing this point in the last day or so (many of which haven’t appeared on this thread, but have been through emails with people i knew were PSF’s or through twitter, where I got the link in the first place). This has been an extremely valuable conversation for me.Finally, whether i’m right, and the Iceland decision was an application of my correct view, or I’m wrong, and the Iceland decision was an application of my incorrect view, I will stubbornly insist on being happy that Iceland’s social policy was guided by feminist concerns (rather than, for instance, religious concerns) and I’ll persist in that happiness even if i’m convinced that it was a misapplication of feminism most correctly construed.

 

Justin Bernstein 

Sorry for the delay–was traveling. Here are a few further thoughts…With regard to socially progressive stripping and false consciousness:I’m confused again by this talk of moral costs…Given the fact that tons of different people disagree about their moral views and these divisions aren’t going to end in the meantime (what Rawls calls the fact of reasonable pluralism), we shouldn’t be basing a conception of justice/justify the government’s use of coercive power on the basis of a particular comprehensive doctrine. You say stripping is morally bad, but your friend Lindsey disagrees. I’m going to guess that Lindsey is a reasonable person, and I know you are…there are always going to be these sorts of disagreements between reasonable people, yet we still have to come up with laws that are coercive and can be rationally/reasonably accepted by its citizens–this is what democracy is, it’s citizens consenting to being coerced. If you start with a broadly Kantian sort of view of these things, or just hold that our autonomy i something that cannot be violated without justification, then clearly government coercion itself is needs to be justified. So, the idea is that we shouldn’t be legislating on the basis of a particular comprehensive doctrine but on ideas in the public political culture that reasonable citizens accept. You point out that there are other instances in which comprehensive doctrines are currently forced upon citizens. This is probably true, and I would condemn such political systems on the same grounds that I’d condemn outlawing strip clubs. A related line of reasoning holds for false consciousness. There may very well be instances of false consciousness, but I don’t see how it follows from that the government should have a role in redressing it. I’m not sure how we definitively identify an instance of false consciousness rather than, say, a fundamental disagreement in values; imagine a government trying to decide on such issues. Furthermore, I would think that even if we were to accept a sort of “moral costs” analysis (as you do), the government’s use of coercion to help people overcome false consciousness could very well lead to problems much more serious than individuals pursuing a conception of the good that is ultimately based in delusions. In other words, I think the burden is on you to make 3 arguments(1) Strippers suffer from false consciousness(2) It is the government’s role to prevent individuals from pursuing a conception of the good if said conception is based in false consciousness(3) The government’s so acting as outlined in (2) is better than the alternative.With regard to redistributive alternatives:I agree that redistributive justice would be better than allowing people to choose to sacrifice their dignity for money (here I am thinking of a case where the stripper/prostitute does NOT see her work as a form of empowerment but as a necessary evil for providing for her family, etc.). In the meantime, however, I think that it’s better to allow women to make their own choices about the importance of their dignity vs. the importance of providing for their families. I mean, I don’t see why the government should be allowed to tell poor women that they can’t make money without providing them with viable alternatives. Of course, ideally the government would provide such alternatives, but if we’re falling short of ideal conditions/a Marxist revolution, I think it should be up to the strippers themselves to survive. Furthermore, I think we should be working to get strippers/prostitutes/porn workers better rights so that they can be protected/have as many choices as possible. Here I’m a Martha Nussbaum feminist in favor of legalized prostitution/stripping/porn.That said I should read more of my Marx in order to fully respond to your argument that autonomy is impossible given any form of capitalism. I’m sympathetic to redistributive justice to a large degree, although I doubt Marx would think Rawls’s difference principle/fair equality of opportunity would be sufficient for the fair value of the basic liberties (i.e., Rawls thinks that his scheme for redistributive justice is sufficient to avoid the charge that he’s merely providing formal liberties that do not amount to actual autonomy…i.e. he wants to avoid the charge that he’s provided autonomy with regard to Hobson’s choices, etc.) I don’t really know how to do that argument justice without getting a better conception of Marx’s account of the nec/suff. conditions for autonomy.

 

Raleigh Miller 

It’s necessary that I forgo the opportunity to respond comprehensively. I could easily spend another hour writing about this stuff…but my metaphysics paper beckons. Here’s my swift response.Youre right…those three burdens are upon me. But I don’t take myself to have been shirking them…I think those three things are what i’ve been trying to confront and demonstrate.Second, let’s talk about reasonable disagreement. here’s something that reasonable disagreement shouldn’t mean: the kind of disagreement that two generally reasonable people can have. There would be many problems with this. People can be selectively unreasonable. I reserve the right to say that Lindsey is a reasonable person (she certainly is!) but that her position on this issue is unreasonable (I’m not necessarily inclined to say that outright, but I pretend to be more confident in my position than I am, then I would say such a thing). If I’m committed to allowing reasonable disagreement, i hope i’m not committed to refusing to enforce any ideology that someone in a certain set of people (the reasonable people) disagrees with. What about reasonable people that disagree with the principle of reasonable disagreement? What about anarchists that reasonably disagree with Rawlsian liberalism? If liberalism can’t enforce its ideology on such persons, then liberalism is self-defeating. Second, reasonable people can disagree about what’s reasonable to disagree about, and if you’re required to not enforce any ideology that one of the reasonable people think could be the subject of reasonable disagreement (even if none of the reasonable people actually disagree about the ideology itself), then you’re in a similar pickle; the space of ideologies that can be enforced becomes extraordinarily small.All of this boils down to a familiar point. Desirable doesn’t mean ‘desired by someone’. Prefereable doesn’t mean ‘preferred by someone’. And ‘reasonable’ doesn’t mean ‘believed by some generally reasonable person’. Rather these are normative concepts, whose appropriate application is open to demonstration by argument. I have been attempting to argue that *the* reasonable position (not *a* reasonable position) is that strip clubs ought to be banned, and that Iceland did something right. I may have failed to demonstrate that in your book, but the fact that disagreement exists, even among reasonable people, had better not *by itself* render the state incapable of legitimately enforcing such a norm. Otherwise you end up with a very anemic state indeed.

 

Justin Bernstein  

I think I’m using “reasonable” in a different way than you are–following my philosophical hero/sugar daddy Rawls, I think of it as a normative concept that refers primarily to persons. To be reasonable is to treat all persons as having equal moral standing and part of what this entails is to offer reasons that others can accept qua free and equal citizens. So there are two kinds of cases that are usually presented as examples of being unreasonable.1. I’m insisting that I am entitled to special treatment regardless of comprehensive doctrines–say there’s a cake and I demand 10 slices when there are 11 people. I’m being rational insofar as I’m attempting to secure my own advantage, but I’m being unreasonable insofar as I’m attempting to receive preferential treatment/be an exception to the rule.2. I attempt to use the government enforce my Kantian/Catholic/etc. views on everyone, and I’m thereby offering them reasons they cannot accept insofar as they don’t agree with my comprehensive doctrine. The move to political liberalism is meant to avoid this second form of unreasonableness. It does so by relying on a few basic ideas latent in the political culture (such as that citizens are free and equal, and a just society would be a fair system of cooperation over time). Thus the phrase “political not metaphysical”.Reasonable disagreement involves the second kind of case. The idea is that there are people who, confronted with the same evidence and are sincere in trying to determine the truth, but they come to markedly different conclusions about contentious philosophical issues due to what Rawls calls the burdens of judgment. The burdens of judgment and pluralism about issues in ethics/metaphysics/epistemology/religion/etc. are an inevitable part of living in a society which does not use repressive measures in order to force everyone to accept one comprehensive doctrine.I agree that the fact of disagreement between you and Lindsay does not instantly entail that the issue of strip clubs should be off the table. Yet insofar as you and Lindsay are coming from very different starting points philosophically (that’s my impression at least) and there either isn’t a great way to settle whose comprehensive doctrine is correct, or doing so would take a long time and in the meantime we need to develop principles of justice to regulate society, I think it would be a misconception to say that Lindsay is being unreasonable about this issue. (Not that you are saying that–I saw your caveat). Since Lindsay is the one who is not attempting to tell other people how to live and you are (tentatively, of course), I would say that she’s not being unreasonable on this point given this specific definition of reasonableness. I would say instead that if you were to really push your own position, you would be being unreasonable insofar as you are basing it on a comprehensive doctrine that isn’t part of the public political culture, i.e. you aren’t appealing to reasons that all citizens can share qua citizen.I think Rawls would happily say that to disagree with the “principle of reasonable disagreement” is to be unreasonable. I don’t know that he uses that phrase, but I’m taking you to mean that we shouldn’t justify coercion via appeal to comprehensive doctrines. It doesn’t seem like a stretch to me to say that someone who disagrees with such a principle is unreasonable insofar as they say that they are entitled to force their own moral and religious convictions on others. And Rawls’s form of liberalism is not meant to force its ideology on unreasonable people–he’s not trying to rope in Christian fundamentalists, for example. So yes, various unreasonable ideologies would disappear in a well-ordered society (according to Rawls), but the emphasis in his political philosophy is to protect citizens, not ideologies.Furthermore, I think the “liberalism is self-defeating” line really needs to be spelled out if we’re to do it justice…I don’t buy that objection at all, but maybe you could clarify it and we could discuss it further. (When you’re not so tied up with the metaphysics paper.) Also, feel free to hit me up if you want some reading suggestions on the stuff I’m talking about…no pressure, of course.

P.S. I like Rawls.

 

Raleigh Miller  

hahaha yes, your affinity to rawls is evident.So…i’ll have to defer to you, and i’ll have to concede that (a) if Rawls is right, then I’ve got problems, and (b) i’m not equipped to say that Rawls is wrong. But i’ll ask you a more general question:Arguing from false consciousness is inevitably uncomfortable…but let me try and make you uncomfrotable in the reverse direction. Does broad application of Rawlsian liberalism simply have to settle for (a) assuming false consciousness doesn’t exist, or (b) assuming that a theory of justice is beholden to consciousness, be it true or false, and has *no* business in attempting to discern false consciousness from true consciousness?And if so, are you (as the gung-ho Rawlsian) at all worried about exploitative power structures that become pervasive by inculcating in the oppressed an identification with their oppressed status as though it were natural? Such persons will always be treated justly (by the Rawlsian who refuses to countenance false consciousness) by fully liberating them to be who they are taught to be by those power structures, which in turn reifies those power structures, and the cycle perpetuates and reifies itself.  Look, you’ve made me uncomfortable with my paternalism. No doubt about it. I just wonder if I can’t make you uncomfortable with being complicit in these more subtle oppressive mechanisms, and that we can then agree that we’re both saddled with consequences that should give us pause and make us worry.

 

 Raleigh Miller  

Also…the irony of trying to combat patriarchy with paternalism isn’t lost on me.

 

Justin Bernstein

I’m not going to lie, Raleigh…I don’t know how to make sense of false consciousness, diagnose it, the extent to which it’s prevalent, etc. My intuition is that if a Rawlsian well-ordered society were to be realized, many of these issues of false consciousness would be either removed or mitigated significantly. I still think stereotype threat … See Morecould still be an issue, and maybe we’d have to have some discussions about how (or whether) to use government measures to alleviate its negative impact on equality of opportunity. I think the most problematic aspect of Rawls’s theory with regard to false consciousness would be his treatment of the family, an aspect that feminists (both liberal and radical) have criticized. I think that might be one area where you could fruitfully raise doubts/have worries about false consciousness being insufficiently acknowledged/combatted.

Overall, though, I find that given the difficulty of quantifying/pinning down/proving false consciousness, I think that the Rawlsian package, while not perfect, is the most appealing way to balance liberty and equality for all. (For the record, he himself recognizes this with his device of the original position–his conception of justice is simply the best out of the available options.) My thought is that it will be up to members of society to attempt to combat false consciousness rather than through government coercion.

Alright, time for me to stop being a nerd and enjoy Saturday night.

 

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