
The God Trick: ‘In the Shadow of Justice’ - diodorus
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/god-trick
======
crazygringo
This is a... tremendously odd book review, since it's barely about Forrester's
book at all, and also her book came out way back last September. Also it's
funny (but very cool) to see it here on HN, since unless you're a political
philosopher you've probably never even heard of Rawls.

But I have read both much of Rawls as well as Forrester's book, and hopefully
I can distill what it's all about here for anyone curious.

In a nutshell, Rawls revived the long-since-discredited notion of the social
contract (society is an agreement between people for the common good), and
gave a deeply intellectual justification for both liberty, as well as
extensive (although not unlimited) redistribution -- thus a "liberal" middle
way between pure communism and pure capitalism.

He presented this in a kind of universal way, and thus gave a kind of
intellectual respectability to liberal democracy that provides health care,
social services, arguably a basic income, and so on, putting that on par with
the equal intellectual respectability that free market liberalism had. So
liberals who supported social programs weren't just wishful thinkers or muddy-
headed -- they had just as much intellectual rigor as market conservatives.
This was _huge_.

But the "universal" aspect of his philosophy always seemed rather suspect.
Forrester's book is a wonderful history of how his ideas evolved as products
of the time and specific national/international historic circumstances, and
were often "out of date" by the time they were published, and therefore
there's nothing "universal" about them, and that the veneration given to his
ideas may be preventing us from developing even better ones.

But tying any of this to Trump or Dershowitz is total nonsense/clickbait.

~~~
lordgrenville
> unless you're a political philosopher you've probably never even heard of
> Rawls

Rawls is one of the most famous philosophers of the 20th century. Almost any
Ethics 101 course (a requisite in a wide range of fields) will touch on his
work.

------
PaulDavisThe1st
Maybe it is necessary to read the book that the article is ostensibly built
around. I hope so, because the article seems to do little to offer an argument
for why Rawls attempt at a universal notion of "right" is somehow now seen as
a mistake. It closes with this claim:

"In reminding us that even political philosophers who claim to speak outside
any particular time or place are, in fact, the product of a particular time
and place, Forrester undoes the pretension to timelessness that Rawls claimed,
at least for a time."

At best, there's some sort of argument that "a small group of influential,
affluent, white, mostly male analytical political philosophers" are now seen
less favorably as people, or at least as "influencers". Fair enough, and
almost certainly true, but what does this have to say about Rawls ideas
themselves?

The closest it comes is by mentioning Haraway's "god trick" critique, which is
not fleshed out nor given any real standing. Haraway's critiques and ideas are
not stupid, but they stand in absolute opposition to Rawls (and others of his
"kind") in asserting that there really can be no universal knowledge (because
it is all situated). This isn't really a critique of Rawls, it's just a denial
that the entire project of western philosophy can ever be well-conceived. That
might be true, but if so it takes down much, much more than just Rawls and his
contemporaries.

If I had to TLDR the article, I'd say "philosopher dude from 70s was once
super popular, now faces criticisms from others who never agreed with him."

~~~
crazygringo
In a nutshell, Rawls assumes that a kind of "individualist" constitution-based
political liberalism is the right answer. I'd say there have been three main
critiques of this that have arisen in the past 30 years:

1) That people aren't atomistic individuals, but rather embedded in groups,
societies and identities, and so a theory of politics needs to consider the
importance of groups as well as individuals, that a group is more than the sum
of its members (multiculturalism)

2) That Rawls' focus on constitutionalism basically gives way too much weight
to law made by constitutional conventions and interpreted by a supreme court,
with normal political processes of voting, representation, and lawmaking seen
as relatively unimportant (rights talk, perilously
antidemocratic/antipolitical)

3) That liberalism has been having a _really hard time_ lately dealing with
populism, immigration, making good political decisions generally, and so on,
precisely _because_ it ignores feelings about groups, and that majoritarian
democracy seems to be resulting in worse and worse policies lately. So
empirically, people are worried that we need some improvements (crisis of
liberalism)

~~~
mistermann
> That liberalism has been having a really hard time lately dealing with
> populism, immigration, making good political decisions generally, and so on,
> precisely because it ignores feelings about groups...

Liberalism, or more accurately the "public mainstream conversation about
reality", does indeed ignore feelings about groups, but this is but one thing
it ignores, there are numerous other things that we routinely and
_enthusiastically_ ignore. There is a very strong culture of desire to ignore
observable evidence (facts/possibilities/counterfactuals, ideas, events, etc),
and this culture can be observed always and everywhere (in varying degrees, of
course), from science/medicine to mainstream media to public forums.

Of course, it's not possible or pragmatic to discuss everything in full
resolution, but there's absolutely no need to _deny the existence of_ the
complexity of reality.

~~~
363728226
Can you expand on your definition of liberalism a little? It seems like you're
defining liberalism by how the word is used collquially in the public context
but I took the parent to mean liberalism as in the academic concept realated
to philosophy, political science, and international relations theory.

~~~
mistermann
This seems good enough I suppose:

[https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism](https://www.britannica.com/topic/liberalism)

 _Liberalism, political doctrine that takes protecting and enhancing the
freedom of the individual to be the central problem of politics. Liberals
typically believe that government is necessary to protect individuals from
being harmed by others, but they also recognize that government itself can
pose a threat to liberty. As the revolutionary American pamphleteer Thomas
Paine expressed it in Common Sense (1776), government is at best “a necessary
evil.” Laws, judges, and police are needed to secure the individual’s life and
liberty, but their coercive power may also be turned against him. The problem,
then, is to devise a system that gives government the power necessary to
protect individual liberty but also prevents those who govern from abusing
that power._

I'm speaking more so I think from the perspective of _the implementation of_
liberalism, which is fairly closely tied to managing the affairs of human
beings. So in doing so, we have conversations about the nature of society
(events, rules, rights, procedures, fairness, speech, etc) and try to come up
with an arrangement that maximizes outcomes for "all" people, _generally
speaking_.

The point I was trying to make was with respect to "...liberalism has been
having a really hard time lately dealing with...precisely because it ignores
feelings about groups...", in that "feeling about groups" is not (precisely)
the only thing it ignores. We ignore many variables, including many we
consider unimportant (like _feelings_ ), and likely also some that we're not
even aware of (unknown unknowns).

------
woodruffw
For those unfamiliar with Rawls: Dershowitz's application of the veil of
ignorance is _astoundingly_ facile.

As the article correctly observes, the VoI is _not_ the Golden Rule: it does
not ask us how we how we would feel if the thing we advocate were done to us,
but whether we would accept a course of action or policy were we to know
_nothing_ about ourselves.

Applied correctly, the VoI encourages _everybody_ to be against political
corruption, regardless of political orientation. But this runs contrary to
Dershowitz's own political goals, and it's easier to co-opt your dead academic
colleague's system than it is to excuse criminality from first principles.

------
dangus
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this particular philosophy outlined in the
article...

It seems like the argument here is the exact kind of thing that has burned the
Democratic Party in recent years.

The Democrats should "play by the rules," treating others how they'd like to
be treated, meanwhile the Republican Party continually demonstrates zero
regard for norms that don't necessarily exist in law, but are/were a part of
traditions in government. For example, what happened to the blue slip system?
What happened with Merrick Garland? The Republican Party didn't care that
Supreme Court judges were traditionally elected with at least 60% confirmation
vote in the Senate, and they certainly didn't care that they were denying a
Democratic President his right to appoint _any_ judge.

In reality, the impeachment of Donald Trump happened because there was no
downside for the Democrats. They knew that there was no chance of conviction,
so there was no risk of the destabilization/backlash that might happen if the
President was actually removed from office. The upside was not only that
Congress could subpoena for information, but also that the party could enjoy
the political benefits of the impeachment proceedings. Arguably, it was a
time-waster for the Trump administration. It aided the _perception_ of those
who might lean Democrat or might dislike Donald Trump that the Democratic
Party was working to bring about change. In reality, the effort changed
precisely nothing and had no far-reaching political consequences besides a few
mild upsides for the Democratic Party (at least that I can see).

The situation reminds me of instances where vote trading happens, where the
political parties strategically trade votes on issues they know either will or
won't pass. For example, a Democrat or Republican in a weak district might
vote against the Party's own initiative to give their constituents the
perception that they aren't really like the other members of their party. For
a hypothetical example, you could have a Democratic congressperson in a red
state vote against gun control legislation, while the hypothetical bill had no
chance of failing due to other congresspeople in blue states voting for it.

The idea presented by this article works well for philosophers and
intellectuals - but philosophers and intellectuals do not run our government,
and politics have nothing to do with such things. It's mostly about
perception, vote-gathering, and fundraising. Truth and morals don't play in at
all, and the general populace isn't thinking on this kind of deep level in the
first place. The Impeachment of Donald Trump now feels like a lifetime ago,
and, compared to other aspects of this Presidency, weird to say it but it's a
footnote.

~~~
363728226
This seems like a really slanted explanation that largely overlooks the lead
up to the events you mentioned. First, the parties have always tried to out
maneuver eachother. Things like judge appointment might be departures from a
specific norm but they're not a departure from the broader trend of exploring
the system for pressure points that can be leveraged into comprehensive
strategies. The US isn't the UK or a lot of Europe, agents of the system
frequently depart from established norms because those norms are just
gentleman's agreements like you said and not things important to the system
like the various ways the queen routinely waives chances to exercise her
various reserve powers. The concern was much more simply that being viewed as
ungentlemanly could backfire but that quit mattering as much after Trump ran
basically all of his 2016 campaign on the image of being a rude crude anti-
Bernie who'd whip DC into shape (lots of people viewed these two as the wild
card candidates for some reason even though they were very different).

And the impeachment itself was fought by many influential Democrats, including
Pelosi, precisely because they knew it would fail and were concerned the loss
would motivate opposition voters while damaging the 2020 turnout of Democrats
who might see it as a sign that the party was still largely impotent or simply
disorganized. Just because Pelosi prefers to drive the car doesn't mean she
likes the destination. She was criticized often beforehand for fighting the
idea of an impeachment. She probably just realized that the topic wasnt going
away after all, so presenting a unified front was better a better option than
letting the infighting go on damaging the party's optics. But now the
impeachment is largely viewed as just another in a series of fishing
expeditions (to people in states that don't reliably vote for one party or the
other) and on top of that the progressives in the party are currently
demoralized that their candidate is an establishment figure rather than
someone more extreme like they'd been hoping for.

It arguably would have been no worse if they'd just bided their time and
focused on dominating the 2020 media landscape with a flurry simultaneous
actions. This could have been used to eclipse media narratives like Biden
compromising #MeToo's integrity or the association between the Dems and
staying locked down (Americans are rapidly developing lockdown fatigue). But
instead the Dems are going into an election against an incumbant President
with no compelling parries left, most vocal elements of the party exhausted,
and a press that (outside historically sympathetic outlets like CNN and WaPo)
has lost its original interest in party mascots like AOC who could have been
useful in 2020 to motivate the youth and progressive votes following the
defeats of Yang and Bernie.

------
trabant00
Eastern european reading: something about Trump... Oh it's about philophy -
maybe it's interesting

> A Theory of Justice in 1971—came to take over academic philosophy,
> particularly via “a small group of influential, affluent, white, mostly male
> analytical political philosophers

Nope. Close tab.

------
bitwize
Subtext: It's 2020, and the veil of ignorance is considered out of fashion.
Anything less than special pleading for $MARGINALIZED_GROUP is considered
oppression of $MARGINALIZED_GROUP. That includes listening to
$MARGINALIZED_GROUP philosophers over old white cis male philosophers
_because_ they are $MARGINALIZED_GROUP.

