【域外法思】拉兹：从规范到责任
From Normativity to Responsibilityetc
JosephRaz interviewed by Richard Marshall.
AM: What made you become a philosopher?
Joseph Raz: I wish I knew, just as I wish Iknew the answers to other questions about my childhood. For example, what mademe at 14 enroll in and attend adult education courses in my hometown, lecturesmostly populated by adults older than my parents, many of them retired, and whywas I not intimidated by being the only child there? That may be even morepuzzling than the fact that they were all philosophy courses. In other words Ihave been hooked for almost as long as I can remember. I think it was in mysecond year of this activity that I sought expert advice about what to read (Ishould mention that I was reading other adult books: history of economic ideas,military history, and more). Through various indirect connections I was invitedto meet an elderly gentleman who asked me what I had read so far. Very proudlyI told him that I was then reading Spinoza’s Ethics. He was surprised andassured me that I might be reading it, but I did not understand what I read. Iwas somewhat shaken but did not desist. He was of course right, but knowledgeof that fact did not dispel the charm.
I have to confess that my juvenilephilosophical pursuits, even though they probably did not greatly advance myunderstanding of philosophy, did some good. I became familiar withphilosophical books, (Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, and others) and that easesone’s way to later more mature encounters with those same books and others. Idid also benefit in a practical way. I probably was the only school child whosubscribed to the Israeli philosophical quarterly, I doubt that I understoodthe articles I was so diligently reading. When in due course I applied toenroll as a law undergraduate at Hebrew University I approached theUniversity’s Academic Secretary (the head of the academic administration), withsome requests. To my surprise he invited me to meet him. It was during mycompulsory military service and I could only get weekend leave, so he invitedme to his home. It turned out that he was a philosopher, teaching part time inthe department, and also the executive editor of that philosophical quarterly.You can imagine my surprise that Mr. Pozñansky (that was his name) knew thatwhile still at school I had subscribed to his quarterly for several years. Eventhough I was enrolling to read law, he encouraged me to pursue my studies inphilosophy, saying that they needed someone in legal philosophy (not a branchof philosophy I had ever heard of). Some years later, when I graduated, hearranged for me to continue my studies in Oxford under the supervision ofH.L.A. Hart. It was all his idea, and he secured both admission to Oxford and ascholarship to finance my studies there. I owe him more than I can say.
AM: One of the ideas you have arguedfor(in your 2000 Seeley Lectures)is that we ought to accept the legitimacy ofdifference. So you think someone can reasonably approve of normative practicesthat are positively hostile to each other, but that only commits one torespecting both positions and not engaging with them. Is that right, and if itis, doesn’t non-engagement itself suggest a lack of respect?
JR: Accepting, or respecting difference isof course code. What we should respect are practices, styles of life, idealsand aspirations that are valuable, or that have some good, some value in them,and we should respect them for that reason (even when we have a very imperfectunderstanding of their value). I put it like that for pure gold is rarely foundin human affairs. Our lives are wrought of alloys of mixed quality elements,some inferior or even seriously flawed. Human practices that have value oftenalso enshrine prejudice or superstition, and perpetuate objectionable discriminationsor exclusions. In saying, as it were, that that’s life, I do not mean that weshould be complacent about the unworthy aspects of our practices, or those ofothers. On the contrary, I suggest that we should not be complacent and shouldtry to identify the less wholesome aspects of our own practices, as well as inthose of others, distance ourselves from them and strive to rectify them.
So one reason why it is important to knowabout and to have a balanced view of practices we have no intention of sharingis that understanding them is close to being a precondition for understandingourselves and our engagements with various practices. The recognition of thevalue in what is strange or alien to our ways anchors our humanity, protects usfrom smugness and intolerance. Our knowledge of and respect for other people’spractices also creates for us the opportunity to change, to come to engage withpeople who might otherwise appear strange or worse, and possibly also to findthat we can acquire a taste for the practices that initially were so alien tous – that is the second main reason for seeking to understand and for coming torespect the value of those practices. I am not suggesting that we should forever be looking for new friends, or for a change in our activities and tastes,merely that it is good to have the option, and the option is made real in partthrough understanding what it is like to take it.
In the preceding comments I emphasized thebarriers between people and the hostilities that sometimes accompany them thatare bred by ignorance leading to narrow and misguided understanding of therange of activities and practices that can contribute to human fulfillment, tothe quality of our lives. I also implied that being unaware of the shortcomingsin our own practices may well contribute to such hostilities. Trivially,practices that are free from blemish will not be hostile to the good in otherpractices, even if they are incompatible, in the sense that one cannot fullyparticipate in both. Such incompatibilities force choices on us, but these areno different from other choices forced on us by circumstances: my employer mayrequire me to live within a certain distance from my place of work, and torefrain from working for competitors etc. When practices are literally hostileto other practices this is usually because they are committed (sharing themcommits one) to inconsistent beliefs. Hence at least one of them is committedto false beliefs, which is one of its shortcomings.
A degree of hostility not literally betweenpractices but between those who engage in them is common, and perhaps given ourpsychology inevitable, when the practices themselves prize highly qualitiesthat may be detrimental to participation in the other practice. Some requirequick decisive responses, others value measured slower responses, etc. It is‘natural’ that people in whose life certain qualities of mind, body ortemperament are highly prized will tend to look down on those who lack them,and on activities that devalue them. My previous observations were meant tooffer a corrective, a way of understanding that those others have their own wayto a rewarding life. That may not be enough to rid us of the hostile opinionsand attitudes that are bred by these incompatibilities, but they should enableus to contain them, and prevent them from leading to unjustified actions.
AM: Why do you think we can speak ofevaluative knowledge? We can’t speak of knowledge in a domain if we can’t speakof error. Values are a problem for knowledge if belief in values depends onsocial practice and not the values themselves. So how do you answer thischallenge, and is it a skeptical or irrealist one?
JR: I do not think that there is serious doubt that at least some values depend on social practices. The hard questionsare whether there are any that do not depend on them. And what sort ofdependences there are. Why does this dependence exist? And what does it tell usabout the nature of value? I have tried to deal with these questions; here letme briefly and informally indicate some of the underlying ideas, and how they relateto the possibility of knowledge.
At the very least it seems that allcultural goods are socially dependent. I mean all valuable relationships,associations, attachments and forms of activities that are constituted bystandards that can be sustained over time only by social practices. Commonlythese are not stand-alone, single standards, or forms of activity, but wholewebs of interconnected ones, as for example, all family relations andinteractions, with their ceremonies, complex patterns of mutual expectations,normatively sanctioned demands, and duties, such as standards of privacy withinfamilies that allow greater interference with each other’s affairs in somecontexts, and a greater degree of distance in others, when compared to thenorms and expectations governing such conduct among strangers.
Social goods, in other words, comprise muchof what we and other humans care about. They include all artistic activitiesand products, all the activities, relationships and opportunities that areconstituted in part by social, sometimes institutional, standards, such asdances, sporting activities, public organizations and involvement in them,including political structures of governance and participation in them, andmuch more besides. It is significant, but not relevant in replying to yourquestion, that many if not all of those socially-dependent valuable forms ofactivity, of association, engagement, identification and more, come with theirown distinctive forms of excellence. Nor is it relevant to your questionwhether these goods are created by social practices or merely made accessibleto people through being sustained by social practices. What does matter is thatthe social dependence I am discussing is one of accessibility: That is becausethe ability to be in a relationship, any kind of relationship, or toparticipate, even if only as a spectator, in any sport, or to appreciate anywork of art or artistic performance and so on, depends on understanding,broadly, their constitution, understanding what they are, an understanding thatis required for engaging, and of course for enjoying or benefiting by one’sengagement. And that understanding is inevitably acquired through familiaritywith the practices that sustain the relevant cultural goods. Explicitexplanation can help, but it cannot replace familiarity with the practices,since the cultural goods are too rich and complex to be learnt through explicitexplanation only.
AM: Why don’t you think pragmatic factorscan serve as reasons for belief? Is it linked to your ‘no gap’ thesis?
JR: This seems to me to be a confusingissue. On the one hand to believe that something is the case is to take theworld to be so, and facts that point to it being so are reasons for thatbelief, they vindicate it. On the other hand, that believing something willassuage one’s anxieties, while it does nothing to show that the belief is true,is a good thing. Other things being equal it is better to be free of anxieties.One may argue that it is good to be free of anxieties only if they are provokedby false beliefs, or at any rate by unwarranted beliefs. There will be casesregarding which such arguments are sound. But they will leave many cases inwhich it is genuinely good for a person to have a belief independently ofwhether it is true or not. Does that not mean that there are non-truth relatedreasons for belief? It does. The problem is that we cannot form a belief forsuch reasons. People who have beliefs have some, however incomplete andinarticulate, understanding of what beliefs are. They know that beliefs differfrom fantasies, daydreams, suppositions, etc. and the difference is thatbeliefs, unlike other thoughts, are accountable to the standard of truth. Thatis, while there is nothing amiss in imagining oneself flying across the skies,and there is no reason to abandon the thought when confronted with evidence thatone is not flying, one cannot believe that one flies given that one hasevidence that that is not the case. One can daydream, fantasize etc. but notbelieve. So, that it would be, in some circumstances, good to believe that oneis flying is a reason for having that belief, but it is a reason that cannotrationally sustain having the belief.
What to do when faced with this confusion?To start with we can try to distinguish two kinds of reasons. Practical reasonsthat show that it is good to have the belief, and epistemic reasons thatsupport the truth of the belief. Given that distinction and the nature ofbelief we can observe that practical reasons cannot lead us to have the belief(though they can make us try to affect our circumstances so that we will cometo have it), in the sense that we cannot reason from them to the belief (I’llbe happy if I believe that I am clever therefore I am clever). Epistemicreasons (assuming that they are strong and adequate in the circumstances) oncerecognized do lead us to have the beliefs for which they are reasons (that isthe no gap thesis that you refer to).
But didn’t I admit that practical reasonscan lead one to have a belief, however irrationally? If they are good practicalreasons, why care whether one has the belief rationally or irrationally? Trueenough, practical reasons can cause one to have a belief, and that may be, ifthey are sound and adequate reasons, a good thing, even if one’s believing orthe process of acquiring the belief were irrational (which they will besometimes, though not always). The difference is in the way the reason leadsone to acquire or to have the belief. All reasons can figure in explanations ofwhat they are reasons for. Epistemic reasons can figure in normativeexplanations of having the beliefs that they are reasons for, meaning that wecan reason our way to a belief from premises that these reasons constitute. Ina similar way practical reasons for having a belief can figure as normativereasons for action towards producing circumstances in which one would come tohave or to maintain the belief. They may also, depending on the factualsituation, figure in an explanation of why one has the belief, an explanationthat is not normative, but an ordinary causal explanation. One may come to havea belief because the practical reason can induce self-deception, leading oneinto thinking that there are epistemic reasons for the belief, thus leading oneto have it. In cases like that while the facts that explain the belief arepractical reasons, the explanation is causal and not normative. There are morecomplications on the way to completing the account. But its nature is, I hope,clear.
What is common to all normative reasons isthat they are facts recognition of which can lead people to respond in acertain way (form or sustain beliefs, act, or have emotions, etc.) because they(using their rational powers) recognize that the response is appropriate to thesituation because those reasons are part of it. I illustrated this by referringto realizing through deliberation and reasoning that the response isappropriate. But sometimes no reasoning is involved when one grasps whatresponse would be appropriate. Reasons being facts that make the responseappropriate, practical reasons are facts that show the good that actions arelikely to secure or protect, and epistemic reasons are facts that show that thebelief is likely to be true. Note that epistemic reasons do not show that it isgood to have that belief. That would require a practical reason. Hence, theremay be nothing wrong in someone not bothering to form beliefs on certain issueseven if epistemic reasons for the belief are readily available to him. Theremay be no practical reasons bearing on whether or not he should have a beliefon the matter, or what it should be. However if one is aware of the facts thatare epistemic reasons and aware that they are strong reasons, so long as one’srational capacities are not defective, one will form that belief. That is theno gap thesis.
3:AM: You have a distinct view of law: yousay that it is essential that the law recognizes that its use of power isanswerable to moral standards and claims to have reconciled power and morality,even if it may not live up to its aspirations. But you don’t think that by itsnature law reconciles the duality of morality and power: you think that itsdoing so is a contingent matter depending on the actual political reality ofthe society whose law is in question. Can you say something about this and whyit’s an important distinction?
JR: There is, of course, nothing specialabout the view that the law is answerable to morality. We, and our practicesand institutions, all are. This is more an expression of what morality is, orof the meaning of ‘morality’ that I use in my writings, than of what the law is(though – and I will return to the point – it is that too). Unlike some peoplewho think of morality as a unified system of principles, I am with those who denythat there is a moral system, but believe that there are considerations thatapply to us, and those of them that are basic, underived, cannot be furtherassessed (as good/bad, desirable/undesirable). Against that background I findlittle of theoretical interest in subdividing considerations of that kind intomoral v. some other kinds. When writing about normativity, as you saw above, Ido not mention morality, and write generally about values and normativereasons. When writing about the law I usually accede to the practice ofdiscussing law and morality (using this term), but really having in mind thefact that the law, like all people, practices, institutions and more, can benormatively assessed. Needless to say, the hard questions are to determine whichnormative considerations are relevant to their assessment and which are not.
[edited by An Henjie]
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