Abstract
What is the practical relevance of the discussion of social justice? Presumably, if what philosophers discuss is of any use, it must connect or inform the political practice of democratic societies. The intention to normatively guide the intervention on social institutions is what drives any reflection on justice. The application of justice makes it necessary for normatively justified criteria to be adjusted according to the requirements imposed by the social conditions to which they will be applied. For this reason I have affirmed that a critical hermeneutics or reflective equilibrium can be a suitable path to process the necessary assessments to determine how to translate normative criteria into social reality. The scope and specification of these criteria will always be subject to an interpretation in which citizens and practitioners share a background of application, one constituted by values and normative concepts that specify and adjust to local circumstances the application of the justified normative criteria1 in order to ensure reciprocal recognition autonomy. However, this interpretation and subsequent application may reveal a significant difficulty for justice: the reification of principles, models and normative criteria of justice. This reification means that the process would lose sensitivity to diversity, to the variability of the circumstances of application or to historical variations.
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Notes
See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, pp. 318ff; A. Honneth (2009), ‘A Social Pathology of Reason: On the Intellectual Legacy of Critical Theory’, in Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory, translated by J. Ingram (New York: Columbia University Press), pp. 19–42;
G. Lukács (1971), ‘Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat’, in History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics, translated by R. Livingstone (London: Merlin Press), pp. 83–222; Walzer, Spheres of Justice, pp. 17–20.
Adorno and Horkheimer’s legacy can be seen in these remarks, in the connection between reification and the way of thinking characteristic of the natural sciences, because human beings and social processes are turned into static, measurable and quantifiable objects. See M. Horkheimer and T. Adorno (2002), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, edited by G. Schmid Noerr, translated by E. Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press), pp. 26–28.
See Romer, Theories of Distributive Justice, chapter 5; R. Sugden (1993), ‘Welfare, Resources and Capabilities: A Review of Inequality Reexamined by Amartya Sen’, Journal of Economic Literature, 31 (4), 1947–1962;
T. N. Srinivasan (1994), ‘Human Development: A New Paradigm or Reinvention of the Wheel?’, AEA Papers and Proceedings, 84 (2), 238–243;
B.-C. Ysander (1993), ‘Robert Erikson: Descriptions of Inequality’, in Nussbaum and Sen (eds), The Quality of Life, pp. 67–83.
A. Sen (1997), The Standard of Living (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 33.
This consequence establishes the difference between my perspective and Honneth’s conceptualization of reification as a process of forgetting recognition. I believe, as Honneth himself recognizes, that such an extreme position of forgetting recognition is almost impossible to empirically verify in social reality. As a result, it has weak or no critical force. See A. Honneth (2008), Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea, edited by M. Jay, translated by J. Ganahal (Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press), pp. 57–59, 149–154.
J. Roemer (1998), Equality of Opportunity (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press).
See G. Rodgers (1995), ‘What Is Special about a Social Exclusion Approach’, in G. Rodgers, C. Gore and J. Figueiredo (eds), Social Exclusion: Rhetoric, Reality, Responses (Geneva: International Institute for Labour Studies), pp. 43–55.
See A. Sen (2000), Social Exclusion: Concept, Application, and Scrutiny (Manila: Asian Development Bank); Young, Inclusion and Democracy, pp. 31–33.
See J. Hills, J. Le Grand, D. Piachaud (eds) (2009), Understanding Social Exclusion (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
P. Evans (2002), ‘Collective Capabilities, Culture and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom’, Studies in Comparative International Development, 37 (2), 54–60, 56.
See N. Gooptu (2002), ‘Sex Workers in Calcutta and the Dynamics of Collective Action: Political Activism, Community Identity and Group Behaviour’, in J. Heyer, F. Stewart and R. Thorp (eds), Group Behaviour and Development: Is the Market Destroying Cooperation? (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 227–252.
See F. Stewart (2005), ‘Groups and Capabilities’, Journal of HumanDevelopment, 6 (2), 185–204, 187–188.
See Evans, ‘Collective Capabilities, Culture and Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom’; Stewart, ‘Groups and Capabilities’; C. Gore (1997), ‘Irreducibly Social Goods and the Informational Basis of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach’, Journal of International Development, 9 (2), 235–250.
S. Laderchi and F. Stewart (2003), ‘Does It Matter That We Do Not Agree on the Definition of Poverty? A Comparison of Four Approaches’, Oxford Development Studies, 31 (3), 243–274.
Pogge and Reddy have criticized the World Bank’s ‘money-metric’ approach to poverty assessment in terms similar to what I have called reification of concepts. See S. G. Reddy and T. Pogge (2010), ‘How Not to Count the Poor’, in J. Stiglitz, S. Anand and P. Segal (eds), Debates in the Measurement of Poverty (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 42–85.
See S. Alkire and J. Foster (2011), ‘Counting and Poverty Measurement’, Journal of Public Economics, 95 (7–8), 476–487.
See H. Modzelewski and V. Burstin (2009), ‘Narración como factor educativo de mujeres marginadas: Un caso experimental local’, in A. Cortina and G. Pereira (eds), Pobreza y libertad (Madrid: Tecnos), pp. 95–114.
See Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment M. Horkheimer (1974), Critique of Instrumental Reason, translated by M. J. O’Connell (New York: Seabury Press); Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2; Honneth, Pathologies of Reason.
Korsgaard presents a convincing defence of the normativity of instrumental reason. See C. Korsgaard (2008), ‘The Normativity of Instrumental Reason’, in The Constitution of Agency. Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 27–68, 55–59.
See C. Korsgaard (2008), ‘The Myth of Egoism’, in The Constitution of Agency, pp. 69–99, 84.
J. Habermas (1989), ‘The Concept of Lifeworld and the Hermeneutic Idealism of Interpretive Sociology’, in On Society and Politics: A Reader, edited by S. Seidman (Boston: Beacon Press), pp. 165–187, 165.
See J. Habermas (2001), ‘Conception of Modernity: A Look Back at Two Traditions’, in The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, translated and edited by Max Pensky (Cambridge: Polity Press), pp. 130–156, 153.
This can be seen in many social policy programmes in Latin America, probably the most important of which is Progresa/Oportunidades in Mexico, in which control of the beneficiaries transforms them into means for the programme. See M. Molyneux (2006), ‘Mothers at the Service of the New Poverty Agenda: Progresa/Oportunidades, Mexico’s Conditional Transfer Programme’, Social Policy & Administration, 40 (4), 425–449;
P. Villatoro (2005), ‘Los programas de protección social asistencial en América Latina y sus impactos en las familias: Algunas reflexiones’, in CEPAL, Políticas hacia las familias, protecciön e inclusión social (Santiago: CEPAL). These empirical evaluations are consistent with what Habermas has argued about the juridification of the interventionist state. See Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 2, pp. 367–373.
See S. Kumlin and B. Rothstein (2005), ‘Making and Breaking Social Capital: The Impact of Welfare-State Institutions’, Comparative Political Studies, 38 (4), 339–365;
B. Rothstein (2001), ‘Social Capital in the Social Democratic Welfare State’, Politics & Society, 29 (2), 207–241.
See J. Berger (1991), ‘The Linguistification of the Sacred and the Delinguistifation of the Economy’, in A. Honneth and H. Joas (eds), Communicative Action. Essays on Jurgen Habermas’s The Theory of Communicative Action, translated by J. Gaines and D. L.Jones, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 165–180;
H. Joas (1991), ‘The Unhappy Marriage of Hermeneutics and Functionalism’, in Honneth and Joas (eds), Communicative Action, pp. 97–118;
A. Honneth (1991), ‘Habermas’ Theory of Society: A Transformation of the Dialectic of Enlightenment in Light of the Theory of Communication’, in The Critique of Power (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press), pp. 278–303, 293–300;
J. Cohen and A. Arato (1994), Civic Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 468–500.
I believe Habermas’s answer to this criticism leads to an interpretation consistent with what I am defending here. See J. Habermas (1991), ‘A Reply’, in Honneth and Joas (eds), Communicative Action, pp. 215–264.
Probably the most remarkable antecedents for reification are in Marx’s fetishism of commodity and Simmel’s reflections on money. See K. Marx (1990), Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, vol. 1, translated by B. Fowkes (London: Penguin);
G. Simmel (1990), The Philosophy of Money, translated by T. Bottomore and D. Frisby (London: Routledge).
See Elster, Sour Grapes, chapter 3; M. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, chapter 2; T. Burchardt (2004), ‘Agency, Goals, Adaptation and Capability Sets’, Journal of Human Development, 10 (1), 3–19;
G. Pereira and A. Vigorito (eds) (2010), Preferencias adaptativas: Entre deseos, frustration y logros (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo);
D. A. Clark (ed.) (2012), Adaptation, Poverty and Development Contents (Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan).
See Z. Bauman (2007), Consuming Life (Cambridge: Polity).
B. Barber (2007), Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (New York, London: Norton), chapter 1.
See D. Slater (1996), Consumer Culture and Modernity (Cambridge: Polity), p. 29.
T. Veblen (1994), The Theory of the Leisure Class (Mineola: Dover), pp. 20–21,
J. Lichtenberg (1996), ‘Consuming Because Others Consume’, Social Theory & Practice, 22 (3), 273–297, 284.
See G. A. Cohen (2000), If You Are an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich? (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press).
Cohen’s arguments against the principle of difference are rejected by Estlund, Williams, Lippert-Rasmussen and Pogge, among others. D. Estlund (1998), ‘Liberalism, Equality and Fraternity in Cohen’s Critique of Rawls’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 6 (1), 99–112;
A. Williams (1998), ‘Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 27 (3), 225–247;
K. Lippert-Rasmussen (2008), ‘Inequality, Incentives and the Interpersonal Test’, Ratio, 21 (4), 421–439;
T. Pogge (2000), ‘On the Site of Distributive Justice: Reflections on Cohen and Murphy’, Philosophy & Public Affairs, 29 (2), 137–169. 61. Cohen, If You Are an Egalitarian, How Come You’re So Rich?, 136–137. See also Miller, Principles of Social Justice, p. 13.
See G. A. Cohen (2008), Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA, and London, Harvard University Press), pp. 41–42.
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Pereira, G. (2013). The Background of Application. In: Elements of a Critical Theory of Justice. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137263384_8
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