Preproceedings 2006 - Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society

Respective Justice through Thick and Thin: A Critique of Rawlsean Justice - Trevor Wedman
conditions in order to cry out to the world – “Justice”!
However, they were united insofar as their thin moralities
came to be emphasized over and above their thick
moralities. Inevitably, the same protestors, who would
have fought together unto death in battling the communist
regime, eventually were to fight against each other once
their goal had been achieved as they then had to
determine the structure of the new government and so on.
Thin moralities are needed for the revolution of a people.
Thick moralities are needed for determining a tax code.
Whereas thin moralities are minimal, thick moralities are
maximal. Morality maximally defined (thick morality)
includes the entire moral complexity of a person from the
desire for truth to the desire that dinner begin with the
salad fork.
It is not as if thick and thin moralities were two
different entities. They are rather two aspects of the same
thing. “Minimalist meanings are embedded in the maximal
morality, expressed in the same idiom, sharing the same
(historical, cultural, religious, political) orientation.” (Walzer
1994, 3). There is one morality and it is thick. Yet,
dependent upon any given occasion, thicker or thinner
versions of the same morality will manifest themselves.
Related to the minimal and maximal understandings
of morality is the extent to which one understands certain
values as universal or relative. (Walzer 1994, 8) Thin
morality is minimal morality that expresses those values
which are considered to be most universal. Thick morality
is maximal morality expressing those values which are
considered to be more relative. This is not relativism. One
should hope and expect from other societies that, within
their governments, there would be some structure in place
by which justice could be obtained. Yet, even though one
might support the system of trial by jury in the United
States, one would not necessarily fight for the cause of
such a system in other countries whose societies embody
other traditions of jurisprudence. Just as morality has
thicker and thinner manifestations, it also has some
aspects which are more contingent than others.
The thicker the morality, the more likely it will be
understood relative to given societal or cultural
phenomena. The more relatively a set of values is
understood, the less likely it is that these values will carry
with them an intensity of feeling or emotion when traveling
across other cultures. Likewise, the more minimally values
are understood, the more universally people will attempt to
realize them. This universality requires an abstraction of
sorts. Yet, the abstraction does not entail a loss of intensity
associated with the value. On the contrary, the perceived
universalizability of a given value, e.g. truth, tends to ignite
citizens’ emotions even more. It is this tendency which
allows citizens of the world to unite in a common cause.
“The members of all the different societies, because they
are human, can acknowledge each other’s different ways,
respond to each other’s cries for help, learn from each
other, and march (sometimes) in each other’s parades.”
(Walzer 1994, 8). Unfortunately, it is also this tendency
that creates conflict on a global scale when citizens from
two different places consider two conflicting values to be
universal in their own right.
The most congenial method in developing a theory
of political justice is not simply in finding a societal
structure with universal applicability. This results in too
strong a focus on the thinness of a given morality and
results in one-dimensionality; nor is it best for a theory of
political justice to aim at reflecting the values that a
particular society holds near and dear. Since societies
change over time in their ideals and affections, such a
theory would always be conditioned by its own temporal
context.
Instead of attempting to export systems of justice, it
would be better to allow the first criticism to come from
within. There has to be internal criticism in which the onus
lies with the citizens themselves to criticize their own
society using their own thick conceptions of justice,
equality or whatever else. To this point it is useful to look
again at the protesters in Prague. The first dissenters of
the contemporary regime protested not Leninist, but
Stalinist Communism. In arguing against the Stalinist
regime, they looked to Lenin as an example or ideal of
their state. It was only very late in the process that the
protesters also rejected Lenin and thus sought reform
outside of their own maximalism. It was only here that they
drew closer to liberalism, democracy, and what could be
called the ‘bourgeois civil rights’.” (Walzer 1994, 46).
The example from Prague shows just how well the
process of internal criticism can work. Criticism works best
when it comes and indeed can perhaps only come from
within. People within a society know whether or not their
society is realizing its ideals. When the situation becomes
severe, people protest in one form or another. It was only
after the system had organically ceased to function in
Czechoslovakia that the West could have been of any
help. The external function of maximalist criticism is very
much incapable of transcending borders. “Social critics
mostly work out of a Home Office.” (Walzer, 1994, 49).
Any conception of justice must allow for selfdetermination
in the development of social norms. After all,
to be such, a social norm must come from within a given
society. Individual collectives must decide how they will
exist and of which mores they will consist. Although this
idea fits well into democratic conceptions of justice, it does
not limit itself in appeal to democrats alone. “The principle
has been reiterated in many different times and places,
always in some local idiom and with a set of maximalist
accompaniments.” (Walzer 1994, 67). The principle of selfdeterminism
is an ancient principle that is included in most
forms of government to some extent.
From ideological conflicts to regional independence
movements, maximal moralities are most always, at least
in the short term, impermeable. Not only foreign troops, but
also foreign ideas can be easily perceived as occupying
forces in a homeland. In order to have some sort of
success with some sort of international organization, the
actors involved must show genuine respect for the cultures
and societies of all of the parties concerned. This respect
goes beyond a feigned verbal respect. There must be an
actual concern for the entire complexity of the thick
moralities of the societies in question.
References
Rawls, John. The Law of Peoples. Cambridge, MA, Harvard
University Press 1999.
Walzer, Michael. Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and
Abroad. Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press 1994,
369