A Model of Normative Discourse for Liberal-Democratic Man: Another Look at the Is/Ought Relation

Société québécoise de science politique

A Model of Normative Discourse for Liberal-Democratic Man: Another Look at the Is/OughtRelationAuthor(s): Virginia McDonaldSource: Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne de science politique, Vol. 8,No. 3 (Sep., 1975), pp. 381-402Published by: Canadian Political Science Association and the Société québécoise de science politiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3231067 .

Accessed: 16/06/2014 07:36

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Canadian Political Science Association and Société québécoise de science politique are collaborating withJSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Canadian Journal of Political Science / Revue canadienne descience politique.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.96.21 on Mon, 16 Jun 2014 07:36:29 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cpsa

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=sqsp

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3231067?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


A Model of Normative Discourse for Liberal-Democratic Man: Another Look at the Is/Ought Relation

VIRGINIA McDONALD Atkinson College, York University

When we advance moral commendations and political recommendations as

ordinary men and women, we argue for our position, offering reasons, justifying advice and decision, engaging in what we believe is a form of rational discourse. We are unwilling to retreat from the position we have taken lightly, for in such discourse we are engaged in consideration and defence of the most important matters in human life. What shall I be? What life is worth living? What is worth

defending? So engaged, we do not see ourselves involved in the trivial business of merely expressing our feelings, or in some form of manipulation. So engaged, we reject the rendering of moral commendation or political recommendation as mere caprice, whim, arbitrary subjective likes and dislikes. So engaged, we reject a view that would set us adrift in our own worlds of moral isolation or in a world that would make of morals and politics a mere arena of power relations in which we are supposedly involved in the game of persuading others to adopt our "product." So engaged, we reject the view of moral and political theorists as "admen," pushing their latest "gadgets."

I believe it is in this way that we, at least as commonsensical, ordinary people, see the matter. And trusting to such "instincts," I have turned to the paradox Hume supposedly posed, our "oughts" logically independent of "is" and yet our

"oughts" seemingly bound up with the "is" of our needs, desires, and wants. In this article' I shall attempt to sketch a model of normative discourse for

liberal-democratic man.2 In the course of the sketch I shall be concerned with two main topics: (1) the tension between the contextual implications of "ought" (appeal to rationality and the autonomy of morals), and (2) the truth that the tension cannot be eternally resolved, but resolved only temporarily within the context of an historical framework. I shall suggest that in stating "I ought to do

X," I contextually imply: (a) that I approve of X; (b) that I have good reasons for doing so; (c) that anyone else in my situation would do the same; (d) that in the end it is I, and only I, as a free, rational, moral actor who must make the decision as to whether X is my moral obligation in the present situation.

I shall note an inherent tension in the contextual implications of normative discourse within liberal-democratic theory, between the claim that the moral

1This article is an expansion of a paper entitled "Facts and Values in Liberal Democratic Theory," read to the meetings of the Canadian Political Science Association in Montreal, June 1972. I am particularly indebted to Professor P.H. Nowell-Smith of the philosophy department, York University, for his trenchant criticisms, which I have tried to meet in the preparation of this article. 2Liberal-democratic theory in this article is confined to a discussion of Anglo-American thought. Canadian Journal of Political Science/ Revue canadienne de science politique, viii, no. 3 (September/septembre 1975). Printed in Canada/Imprim6 au Canada.



382 VIRGINIA MC DONALD

agent is autonomous and the claim to objective, publicly ascertainable rules, standards, values, and criteria. I try to show that an understanding of the contextual background of any particular normative discourse requires the historical

backdrop, a consideration of the way in which value words have changed their meanings and uses through time. I demonstrate this point by liberal-democratic

thought which found in natural rights, utility, and the common good, succes- sively generally acknowledged criteria for the application of value words. I try to show that the tension between "ought" and "is" and between the autonomous moral agent and objective criteria is particularly marked with the development of individualism. I try to show how the contextual implications of liberal- democratic discourse, of both autonomy and objective criteria, historically have been reconciled, as have the "is" and the "ought," by the development of "commonsensical," "normal," ways of looking at man in normative contexts. Begin- ning with the concept of the natural man, liberal-democratic theory developed three sub-paradigms expressive of a master egalitarian paradigm: natural rights, utility, and the common good. Each sub-paradigm lost its innovative capacity for

enlarging the concept of equality for its age as it became the captive of a conservative establishment. Each in turn was replaced by a new sub-paradigm able to extend further the practical assertions expressive of an egalitarian paradigm for that particular time and place. Thus in turn the equal right to freedom, the equal right to have one's interests considered, and the equal right to self-development, was offered as the moral glue binding the autonomous moral agent to a com-

munity and fusing the "is" and the "ought" through the identification of the

"ought" with new descriptive criteria and characteristics. In unravelling normative discourse in liberal-democratic society, I shall note:

(1) That political recommendation and moral commendation express our views of what it is to be a man and that the concept "man" defies the neat dichotomy of evaluation and description. (2) That historical analysis of normative discourse is necessary to an understanding of such discourse. (3) That the contextual implications of normative discourse in our society reveal an inherent tension between the claims implicit in such discourse: between the claims to the

autonomy of the moral agent and the claims to objective criteria accepted by any other reasonable moral agent. (4) That there is an implied rationality within our normative discourse which includes reference to a shared community of values as well as to "good reasons" for opting for this instead of that. (5) That if we move beyond the limits of strict logical deduction and the reduction of value language to purely descriptive terms, our "oughts" can be shown to be

grounded in the world of fact: the "brute facts" of the human constitution and condition and the facts judged significant and relevant within our political theories or paradigms. Our political worlds are made meaningful to us through such theories or paradigms. There are both "normal" and "extraordinary" paradigms. The normal serve as explanations and justifications of the established way of life, the extraordinary as critiques of such life. (6) That, since the seventeenth century, individualistic men have offered an "extraordinary" liberal-egalitarian paradigm and have come to make it the normal way of looking and behaving in society. Liberty and equality served as landmarks giving these men their bearings in moving from one practical assertion to another: the equal right



Le discours normatif de la d6mocratie lib6rale : un mod,'le

Selon l'auteur, les implications contextuelles de l'Pnonce < je dois faire X > sont les suivantes : (1) j'approuve X ; (2) j'ai de bonnes raisons pour ce faire ; (3) placle en situation identique, toute personne ferait de meme ; (4) en tant qu'agent libre, ration- nel et moral, il m'appartient de decider de l'obligation morale qui m'incombe de faire X dans la presente situation. Ces implications conceptuelles rivelent une tension inherente entre le postulat de l'autonomie de l'agent moral d'une part et celui de l'existence de regles, valeurs et criteres que l'on suppose objectifs et publics.

Tout discours normatif ne pouvant tre compris que dans la mesure oui le contexte historique &claire les changements dans la signification et l'usage du vocabulaire normatif, I'auteur dimontre comment la pensee liberale-dimocratique s'est appuyde sur les concepts de droit naturel, d'utilite et de lieu commun en tant que nouveaux criteres gindralement acceptables du vocabulaire normatif. Ces trois concepts, que l'on peut considerer comme des sous-paradigmes du paradigme general de l'galit6, ont permis la resolution des tensions entre les postulats autonomistes et objectivistes, de meme que celles entre les 6noncis descriptifs et prescriptifs, par le developpement de fagons < normales > d'apprihender Faction humaine dans son contexte normatif. Au fur et a mesure que cette triade conceptuelle a ete captie par l'establishment con- servateur, elle a perdu sa capaciti innovatrice d'integration galitariste et a dut tre remplacee par la nouvelle trilogie paradigmique plus realiste qui comprend I'egalite des droits ' la libertd, ' la ddfense des interets individuels et a la promotion de l'auto- ddveloppement.

to religious freedom; the equal right before the law; the equal right to have their interests heard, considered, and satisfied; the equal right to self-development. The autonomy of the free moral agent was constrained by the development of certain agreed "normal" ways of judging, expressive of that paradigm. Begin- ning with the concept of the "masterless" man, the natural man, liberal-democratic theory developed three sub-paradigms of an egalitarian master paradigm: natural rights, utility, and the common good. (7) That this analysis of liberal- democratic normative discourse reveals the complexity of the dimensions of the "is" which impinge on the "ought." A logical interdependence is seen to exist between "ought" and "is" in the following ways: (i) "ought" implies agreed right ways of doing things; (ii) "ought" is grounded in the "brute facts" of man's nature, his limitations, capacities, and interests, and his prior commitment to certain values and rules; (iii) "ought" implies a set of facts judged significant and relevant within political paradigms; (iv) "ought" finds in viable social organizations a minimum set of particular norms. It is in transitional phases when "oughts" are cast adrift from the old rules of behaviour and have not yet found a new footing in established right ways of doing things that "oughts" are seen to be independent of such factual moorings. Committed to the autonomy of the moral agent, liberal-democratic man denied the identification of "ought" and "is" in terms of any specific, final, right way of doing things, but he would con- tinue to remake mores in accordance with his "oughts" through a political process dedicated to an equal consideration of the opinions and claims of all men.

1. The evaluative/descriptive concept "man"

Our political recommendations express our views of what it is to be a "man." At once we are faced with a term that defies the neat dichotomy of evaluation




and description. Being human ourselves, we are naturally concerned about human beings, about what sustains and enriches them. This positive attitude tends to remain constant while our descriptive contents of "man" change.

Some of the descriptive content of man seems intrinsic to the very way in which we think. There are certain basic categories in terms of which we think of man. Some of these are descriptive (man's sense of time and change). Others are evaluative (our notions of good and bad, right and wrong). And yet others are evaluative/descriptive. For example, our notions of sane and insane, rational and irrational, seem purely descriptive, but on closer analysis we note that there are certain common values implied in our very understanding of what it is to be sane or rational. Sir Isaiah Berlin has noted that bound up in the term human beings are the concepts of sanity and reasonableness which include recognition of the fact that men want to live and that they feel pain. To fail to recognize these facts, to fail to recognize that it makes a profound difference whether you kick a man or kick a stone, whether you smash a bottle or a man's head, is to find oneself classified not as a person with different moral values than one's own but as insane. Pleasure and survival are fused descriptive/evaluative notions. We desire and value them at the same time. Professor H.L.A. Hart has shown that given the fact that human beings want and value survival, and given certain facts about man's constitution and condition - his approximate equality, his vulnerability, his limited understanding, altruism, and strength of will in a contingent condition of scarcity - any social organization as such will express certain common primary rules such as those against violence and theft. Hart argues that "... the facts mentioned afford a reason why, given survival as an aim, law and morals should include a specific content."3 For Hart that specific content repre- sents the minimum content of natural law.

2. The historical backdrop to normative discourse

To understand the contextual background of any particular normative discourse requires the appropriate historical backdrop, which enables us to see the way in which the meanings and uses of value words have changed through time. A broad historical sweep enables us to recognize that there is no single language of morals. The language of morals varies with historical setting. In a stable, status-bound society, moral words tend to have fixed descriptive meanings. In such a society the way to behave is generally agreed upon. There is no questioning, no argument, and consequently no emphasis upon choice. But with the breakdown of stability and consensus, value words become dislodged from their descriptive meanings. In periods of social upheaval, some men cling to the old descriptions, others demand new criteria for applying value terms. Men move beyond the reduction of morality to the currently accepted, the "is," and begin to contrast the conventional morality unfavourably with the "natural" or "true" morality. The moral becomes a term devoid of content or filled by a confusing array of contents until, if stability returns, new, generally acknowledged criteria are established for the application of value words.

3The Concept of Law (4th ed. Oxford 1967), 189



A Model of Normative Discourse 385

3. The contextual implications of liberal-democratic normative discourse

If we consider what we are about when using evaluative language, we find that we argue and defend our recommendations and prescriptions. In the very utter-

ing of an "ought," in the offering of a moral commendation or political recommendation, we invite argument. For terms like "ought," "right," "good," imply a realm of discourse beyond mere likes, dislikes, and inclinations.

Contextually, I imply certain points in saying, "I ought to do X'"4: (a) that I approve of what I am recommending; (b) that I have good reasons for doing so; (c) that anyone else in my situation would do the same; and (d) that in the end it is I, the free, rational, moral agent who must decide whether this is my moral or political obligation. Points (b) and (c) imply that what I am advancing is a position that any other rational, moral agent would accept in view of the

community of standards, principles, and rules we share. I must make good this claim by convincing others to whom my remark is addressed that we do, or at least can, operate within such a community of discourse. Points (a) and (d) have not always been contextually implied in normative discourse. The total

complex of implication in (a) to (d) is the unravelling of the "moral point of view" as seen from the perspective of liberal-democratic society. This total com-

plex constitutes the culmination of four centuries of individualism. The "demon" in evaluative terms, the tendency to shake off their identifica-

tion with any specific way of life, is particularly evident in the normative claims of liberal-democratic man. The claim to the autonomy of the moral agent, his ultimate responsibility to choose his values, to make them his own by an act of commitment is in tension with the claims to the rationality of that commitment, that those values would be the choice of any other rational, free, moral agent. If that claim to rationality cannot be sustained, the concept of value would lose its

meaning. Attitudes of approval and disapproval would tend to fit the analysis of moral language as the mere venting of the speaker's inclinations, likes, dislikes, whims, and caprices.

4. The rationality of normative discourse

Rationality as a shared community of values, principles, and criteria, includes as well the concept of "good reasons" - for opting for this rather than for that. Such reasons are seen as in some way bound up with the facts of human nature and the world we live in and our beliefs about them. We point to the consequences of pursuing this "ought" instead of that, we show the relevance of our "oughts" to the satisfaction of human needs, wants, interests, and desires.

This implication has not gone unchallenged. In the eighteenth century, philosophy grew conscious of an apparent logical gulf between the "ought" and the "is." It was logically impossible, it was argued, to deduce an "ought" from solely factual premises (violation of the so-called "Humean" Law). Hume's celebrated

passage in the Treatise spelled out the nature of that "law":

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and estab-

4I am indebted to Professor P.H. Nowell-Smith for my emphasis on the contextual implications of normative discourse. See his Ethics (London 1954).




lishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no, proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it. But as authors do not commonly use this precaution, I shall presume to recommend it to the readers; and am persuaded, that this small attention wou'd subvert all the vulgar systems of morality and let us see, that the distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv'd by reason.5

Understanding of this passage can, I believe, be illuminated by reading it to-

gether with Hume's equally controversial assertion that "reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions."6 The latter passage, on summary reading, conjures up the vision of man swayed by violent passions which reason can affect only by assisting in their gratification. A cursory reading of the is/ought passage suggests a logical unbridgeable gulf between "is" and "ought." And yet the passions - which are commonly understood as part of the "is" - play a highly important role in Hume's analysis of "ought" since for him only passions, calm or violent, ever actuate us. There is therefore compelling reason for us to grapple with both passages together.

"REASON IS, AND OUGHT ONLY TO BE, THE SLAVE OF THE PASSIONS"

Hume argues that what we "improperly" and "loosely" describe as reason con-

trolling our passions is in fact not reason but calm passions which at first glance appear to be a manifestation of reason because they have certain characteristics

commonly associated with reasoning. He stresses two types of calm passions which are commonly confused with reason - desires which accord with the real

qualities of objects and desires which accord with these qualities as constitutive of or as a means to happiness. It is Hume's contention that these desires may become operative after reason and judgment have influenced a moral agent, or

independently of reason and judgment as a result of his predisposition to respond as if moved by reflection and judgment. Further, Hume believes that we can and ought to transcend our private, self-centred perspectives and see situations and people "from the distant view" - from the standpoint of the impartial, disinterested, and, in moral situations, sympathetic spectator. Such a viewpoint is what most of us would consider a rational viewpoint - one which allows for communication and agreement by transcending the limits of self-interest which bind us to a world of chaos, confusion, disagreements, and contradictions. Such a disinterested perspective is needed to achieve true moral judgments as well as true beliefs.

We must ask ourselves then whether we are in basic disagreement with Hume on the relation of reason to conduct or whether our disagreement with him centres on a mere terminological point. Given Hume's definition of reason, as limited to deductive and inductive reasoning, I think we would agree that neither of these types of reasoning by itself can move us to action or reaction. Yet by

5A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (1888; reprinted Oxford 1960), 469-70 6Ibid., 472




agreeing that calm passions are passions prompted by considerations of the "distant view," that they are influenced by considerations of the intrinsic worth of an act or its tendency to contribute to human happiness, Hume is only saying what most of us say when we contend that reason in those senses does influence our conduct. Our dispute with Hume seems then a mere quibble over a termino-

logical point.

THE IS/OUGHT RELATION Hume seems from the "is/ought" passage to be casting serious doubt on the pos- sibility of grounding what we ought to do on anything, be it God or any state of human affairs. Yet this interpretation of Hume's meaning would be inconsistent with his stress on the importance of the connection between morality, human

happiness, and approval. It can in fact be argued7 that Hume denies the auto-

nomy of morals in the sections of the Treatise following the above passage. He

bridges the apparent gulf between "is" and "ought" through the important emphasis he places on human needs, feelings, and aspirations.

In the section following the "is/ought" passage, "Moral Distinctions Deriv'd from a Moral Sense," Hume offers his analysis of "good" and "ought." Moral distinctions, he contends, are grounded on feeling, or sentiment, and not on reason. But this moral sentiment is of a "peculiar kind" such that it is sharply distinguished from mere personal liking or inclination. This sentiment is caused

"only when a character is considered in general, without reference to our particular interest."8 A moral judgment is not limited in its meaning to the presence of such disinterested approval. It is a judgment directed as well at the intrinsic value of an act or person or at the tendency of an act to produce human happiness. Thus moral judgments for Hume are corrigible. We can be mistaken as to the intrinsic worth of a thing or person or as to an action's tendency to produce human

happiness, and we can err in the perspective from which we survey the situation. Hume cannot, I believe, be classed with the naturalists. He does not define

moral words in terms of the approval of this, that, or the other man. His moral

approval is that of the ideal man, the disinterested spectator who can transcend considerations of private interest and examine acts in the light of their effect on human happiness for those directly or indirectly affected by such acts. He does

ground morality on a specific type of fact - on objects of feeling - but those

feelings are not the feelings we have necessarily here and now but the feelings we should have when making moral judgments. Hume argues that human nature (with its feelings and aspirations) causes the patient (the feeler of passion) to

judge "good" or "bad." These particular judgments are generalized by the mechanism called "sympathy," and thus become moral ("good" and "evil"). What is "good' or "evil" will vary somewhat with the times (that is, circumstances). Hume assumes that men can and do act as moral agents. They can do so because of universal sympathy. Where sympathy is not able or trained to extend to a consideration of all humanity, self-interest comes to its help by show- ing us that only by taking the distant perspective, a perspective common to all mankind, can moral language or any language operate; only then is it possible

7See in particular A. MacIntyre, "Hume on 'Is' and 'Ought,"' in Hume: a Collection of Critical Essays, ed. V.C. Chappel (New York 1966), 240-64. 8Hume, Treatise, 472




to argue, reason, and reach agreement. With his stress on the relation of feeling, human sentiment, and aspiration to morality, Hume must, I believe, be counted

among those ethical writers who see the close relationship of morality to human ends and purposes.

Much of twentieth-century moral philosophy is a footnote to Hume's celebrated passage on the is/ought relation." A new logical impossibility was noticed. It was not only shown to be logically impossible to deduce an "ought" from

solely factual premises, it was logically impossible to define evaluative terms in

descriptive language (the "naturalistic" fallacy). Value terms were seen to have

"something extra" which cannot be eliminated by the mere description of what- ever we call good. Following upon this insight, the emotivist school denied that in normative discourse we are describing anything. The "something extra" in evaluative language is the mere evincing of our likes and dislikes.'0 A more

sophisticated and authentic view of this "something extra" came with the analysis of evaluative terms as evaluative rather than emotive. Value words were now seen as having both descriptive and evaluative aspects but the latter were the key aspects. Evaluation came to be seen as commending and approving, which in turn brought out the close link between evaluation and choice, guidance and advice, decision and action."

With a new stress on language-in-use, concern came to be centred on the contextual background of moral discourse. Setting out from this ordinary language, morals-in-use perspective, certain philosophersl2 became aware not

only of the importance of attitudes of approval and disapproval but of the im-

plied claims behind such attitudes - that there are good reasons for such approval and disapproval, reasons that could appeal not only to the agent himself but to any agent faced with a similar situation. These philosophers grew aware of the relation of "good reasons" for moral choices to our interests and aspirations as members of a political and social community. They came to recognize that reasoning is not limited to a single model. There are different modes of

reasoning available for different interests and activities. "Reasons for" rather than "premises in" an argument was seen as a more rewarding analysis of argu- mentation both in science and moral discourse at the ultimate level of paradigms of explanation, ways of looking at the world, and ways of living and behaving in that world.l3 They further recognized that such ways of life are ultimately

9The following necessarily abbreviated account of twentieth-century moral philosophy sums up my assessment of the field as a result of a number of years' study of moral philosophy in the philosophy department at the University of Birmingham and in the Faculty of Moral Sciences, Cambridge University. The assessment is based on the works of, among others: A.J. Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic (New York 1952); P. Corbett, Ideologies (London 1965); R.M. Hare, The Language of Morals (New York 1964); Freedom and Reason (Oxford 1963); A. MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: a History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (New York 1966); Nowell-Smith, Ethics; T.L. Thorson, The Logic of Democracy (New York 1962); S. Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge 1964); Foresight and Understanding: an Enquiry into the Aims of Science (New York and Evanston, Ill. 1961); The Uses of Argu- ment (Cambridge 1964). 1oAyer, Language, Truth and Logic 11Hare, Language of Morals 12In particular, Nowell-Smith, Ethics, and Toulmin, Reason in Ethics 131n particular, Thorson, Logic of Democracy, and Toulmin, Reason in Ethics




based on the facts of the human condition as validating conditions for the realization of ways of life and as justifications for opting for such ways of life. They came to see that such ways of life and the norms they advocate have a history.14 If stabilized and accepted, the rules of such ways of life tend to acquire a purely descriptive meaning. The distinction between meaning and criteria in normative discourse tends to become blurred. "Oughts" come to be spelled out into publicly accepted criteria and rules of behaviour. Morals and mores become one. But when challenged by new ways of life such descriptive meaning evaporates as rules lose their meaning and significance for a society. At this stage the moral becomes dislodged from and a critique of the "is" of the established mores.

5. Grounding "ought" on fact

Let us grant that no "ought" can logically be deduced from an "is." We need not concede the further point that therefore "ought" cannot, beyond the confines of deducibility, be grounded in facts. Let us grant that words like "good" and "ought" carry important evaluative meaning that enables us to use them for choosing, guiding, and advising, and that this function is lost if we tend to define such general words of commendation and recommendation in descriptive terms. We need not then jump to the conclusion that such evaluative words have no relation to the world of fact.

However, in defending our normative positions by appeal to facts we are engaged in a dangerous game. For in the "bloomin', buzzin' confusion" of the world around us there is a multiplicity of "facts." Which are we to choose as relevant? significant?

Whether we are engaged in normative reasoning, wondering what we ought to do, what kind of life to follow, or in scientific reasoning, wondering how this generalization fits the empirically ascertained facts, we cannot even begin to ask these questions without first labelling the situation. We must look at the multiplicity of facts from one perspective rather than from another, and choose this perspective rather than that, because it helps us in living a more satisfactory life, of understanding and controlling the world around us.

Our interpretation of the situation comes in response to what our particular purposes, interests, and activities may be. Thus, if we are concerned to understand the world around us and to control it for human ends, we first must step back from a concentration upon the scientist at work in the accumulation of facts and the formulation of theories from these facts. We must pose the key questions - why did he pick those facts as significant instead of these? What determines his concepts of relevance and significance? And we find that the whole scientific enterprise is held together by paradigms of explanation, ways of looking at the world that provide focus and relevance for the investigation of the multiplicity and variability of the world of facts. The choice of one paradigm as opposed to another is not arbitrary: "A theory maintains its hold over its practitioners, not because it has resisted falsification or because it fits the facts as a glove fits the hand, but because the scientific community agrees that the theory fits the facts 'better' when the facts are viewed from the perspective of 14Maclntyre, A Short History of Ethics




that theory."15 New paradigms appear when the relation between the accepted paradigm and the "facts" becomes so, distorted that the facts no longer present puzzles to be solved but anomalies that defy solution. The new paradigm "pro- poses somewhat different rules for inquiry, a different problem-field, as well as different notions of significance and of what constitutes a solution.""1

Taking up Wolin's fruitful suggestion that we look at political theories as

paradigms, as ways of looking at the political world that help us to understand and grasp what we are about in a political context, we find they offer guidelines for determining what is significant and relevant for an appreciation of that world. The great political theorists were rarely engaged in offering perspectives that

correspond with the facts. Most of their work was stimulated by crises in their

political worlds: "In each instance the theorist's response was not to offer a

theory that would correspond to the facts. Derangement in the world signified that the facts were skewed ... theories were offered as symbolic representations of what society would be like if it could be reordered."17

These paradigms of explanation require creative acts of imagination, the

capacity to evolve comprehensive wholes, total ways of looking, a coherence rather than a correspondence theory of truth. And our decision to accept one

political paradigm as opposed to another is made by asking ourselves whether the one is more illuminating, more in accord with what we experience as actors in the political arena. In short, men view their worlds through paradigms or con-

ceptual frameworks which determine what facts are relevant and significant. Men view their political worlds through paradigms which are either "normal" or

"extraordinary." The normal serve as explanations and justifications of established modes of life; the extraordinary as critiques of such life. Wolin suggests that we can "conceive of political society itself as a paradigm of an operative kind ... A politically organised society contains definite institutional arrange- ments, certain widely shared understandings regarding the location and use of

political power, certain expectations about how authority ought to treat the members of society and about the claims that organised society can rightfully make upon its members ... This ensemble of practices and beliefs may be said to form a paradigm in the sense that the society tries to carry on its political life in accordance with them."18

We have discovered certain facts of particular relevance to political recommendation. There are, first, certain "brute facts" about human nature and the human condition. Sir Isaiah Berlin has noted certain basic categories in terms of which we think of man. We think of men as sane or insane, rational or irrational. We think of their actions as right or wrong. We think of their assertions as true or false. Some of the categories in terms of which we think of men are

purely descriptive, for example, their sense of time and change. Others are

obviously evaluative, for example, the notions of good and bad, right and wrong. And still others are descriptive/evaluative, for example, sane and insane, rational

15S.S. Wolin, "Paradigms and Political Theories," in Politics and Experience: Essays Pre- sented to Professor Michael Oakeshott on the Occasion of His Retirement, ed. P. King and B.C. Parekh (Cambridge, Eng. 1968), 137 16Ibid., 138 17Ibid., 148 8sIbid., 149




and irrational. Berlin has observed that there are certain common values implied in our very understanding of what it is to be "sane" or "human." Thus we find ourselves thinking in terms of insanity or inhumanity when we confront a man who finds the killing of his family as good a way of counteracting boredom as

any other kind of activity. Hart has shown that given the fact that human beings want to survive and find survival worthwhile, and that given certain features of man's constitution and condition any social organization as such will stress certain primary rules such as those against violence and theft.

These facts of the human constitution and condition are "discovered." They are aspects of the human condition independent of human convention and pre- scription (though the form in which they are expressed is of course a matter of human convention and custom). Being discoverable, they tend to fall logically into the classification of "facts" as we ordinarily understand the term. For they appear to be verifiable, observable, "out there," to be confirmed and pointed to in much the way common sense points to the facts in an existential sense.

We have encountered another category of facts in an extended sense of the

ordinary meaning of that term. The "seeing" of these facts can be thought of as an act of "recognition" rather than an act of "discovery." We have spoken of the facts on which we focus as relevant and significant within the context of a

paradigm, what one "recognizes" within a conceptual framework. We tend, when committed to such perspectives, to "feel" that the facts they emphasise are facts in an existential sense - existing out there as part of reality, whether we like it or not. But facts in this sense are "real" only in the sense of being relevant and significant within that paradigm. Therefore the facts recognized through paradigms are facts not as existents but as convictions in the minds of those committed to the paradigm. In many cases they are such firm convictions that

they have all the psychological earmarks of facts as existents, as just being there, as part of the very structure of the universe. Such deep commitment can lead men to verify"9 their convictions by making them part of reality, part of the mores and enforced norms of their society. They thus become facts as existents in the literal sense. But if the brute facts of the human constitution and condition are contingent as Hart says - man and his world could have been different - the facts within paradigms are even more contingent. Their correspondence to reality as established and enforced mores is a tenuous one. The facts of other political paradigms clash with such mores. In many cases the facts of different paradigms never meet since from the perspective of one paradigm the facts of the other

paradigm simply are not facts. The paradigms through which one "sees" the world may "blind" one to facts "seen" by other paradigms. For example, the demand for universal manhood suffrage in the latter half of the nineteenth century in Great Britain was a "fact" that had to be recognized by a society increasingly committed to a liberal-democratic paradigm. But to have advanced such a demand in Czarist Russia in the same period would have proved meaningless to a society wedded to an authoritarian perspective.20 Yet changing circumstances

19Cf. T.H. Green: "You cannot find a verification of the idea of God or duty; you can only make it." Quoted in M. Richter, The Politics of Conscience: T.H. Green and His Age (Cambridge, Mass. 1964), 134 20Wolin, "Paradigms," 150 and see further 151-2




and experience can lead one to remove the "blinkers" shutting out such facts, to cast aside as now irrelevant what hitherto were facts and to recognize new facts as one orientates oneself to new conceptual frameworks. Thus the relevant and significant facts recognized from the perspective of time and place and one's socioeconomic milieu may vie with the facts viewed as relevant and significant from the perspective of a new "extraordinary" political paradigm. And when the facts of one's socioeconomic milieu tend to prevail over one's ideal paradigm, Marx's analysis of political evaluation and recommendation as mere rationaliza- tion seems to ring true.

In the light of these considerations we can, I believe, move away from a sterile concern for establishing a clearcut separation of the evaluative and descriptive. Human discourse abounds with terms that fuse the evaluative-descriptive, among which are many of the links in our chain of thought and understanding: "sane," "rational," "reasonable," "real," "man," "human being." Our ways of "seeing" in a political context, our political paradigms, are a fusion of a multiplicity of

categories, descriptive, evaluative, and a hybrid of both, which defy separation in thought and practice. These political paradigms, in the final analysis, are set within, and are an expression of, our views of human nature and the human condition, which in turn involve an evaluative/descriptive fusion of characteristics, values, and rules.

6. The political paradigm of liberal-democratic man

Individualistic men from the the seventeenth century on offered an "extraordi-

nary" liberal-egalitarian paradigm and sought to make that paradigm the normal

way of looking and behaving in their society. The basic concepts of that paradigm, equality and liberty, operated like such abstract concepts as mechanism in scientific explanation. To say the world is a machine is to be committed to a general program of research, to an ideal of what constitutes satisfactory explanation of the world. Similarly, liberty and equality, within the liberal-egalitarian paradigm, served as landmarks giving men. their bearings in moving from one practical assertion to another as expressive of that paradigm.

The liberal-egalitarian paradigm is ultimately grounded in an ideal of equality, a respect and concern for the dignity of human, personality. The master liberal-

egalitarian paradigm expressed itself historically in three sub-paradigms: natural

rights, utility, and the common go6d. The basic paradigm remained but the sub-

paradigms changed as each in turn became identified with entrenched and favoured classes and so lost its capacity to carry through the practical assertions

expressive of the master paradigm. Individualistic men first resolved the tension between their autonomy and the claim to public, ascertainable criteria through consensus on the natural right of man to freedom as expressed in the Lockean model. Thus anchored in consensus, Americans could find their way in mapping out a political society for equal, free, rational, moral agents; Lockean English- men after the revolution of 1688 found a focus of identity and community. But this model became identified in England not with the facts of natural, normative man but with an entrenched establishment, with an outdated and iniquitous legal, political, and social structure. Once more the autonomous individual broke loose




from his factual moorings and sought a new objective criterion, the principle of

utility, upon which to build a community of discourse. In turn this formula became suspect as the bulwark for defence of middle-class interests, and men looked to Green's concept of the common good as the moral "glue" to bind them once again in a new community.

THE RISE AND FALL OF THREE SUB-PARADIGMS

Natural rights theory Beneath the natural rights' metaphysical way of seeing man and the world we find a search for normative man, man moved by considerations of purposes and goals that make of his and his community's existence a worthwhile human

experience. For natural rights theorists nature reflected an harmonious design devised by

God for the well-being of His creatures. If the world was saturated with value, with the theological "ought," the world around us, man in his characteristics and behaviour, supplied the necessary adjunct of that "ought," the "can." "Ought" was not reducible to the "can." But it was logically impossible to formulate "ought" without regard to human capacity. In H. Warrender's21 terms, the "can" provided the validating conditions for the realization of the "ought" in foro externo. Thus their statements about natural law and natural rights embraced the normative and factual. Natural law as a set of rules which were statements of the basic laws of the universe, or of man's constitution or of social and political relations, blended with natural law as a set of limitations imposed on man by a superhuman power and made manifest to him in his natural condition, blended with natural law as a set of principles of right which were demanded by a divine Creator yet denied and defied by actual societies.

Historically, expressions of human equality have served as challenges to authority that men qua men may claim certain rights or treatment which are being denied to them. They remind established authority that much of the ine- quality so obvious among men is the result not of nature but of convention, the granting of status and power to some, not to others. The challenge then is: let us strip men of these conventional inequalities, let us abstract man from his artificial environment and examine him as he was born. What do we find? We find that men are bound by the same limiting conditions - by their common fallibility, limited altruism, limited will-power, limited resources, by their common destiny of death and until death, of responsibility for what they make of their lives. We find them with much the same common characteristics. They want life, need food, drink, love. They share not only qualities in common but common values and common rules. Man as human being takes "the moral point of view": "... the principles of the law of nature stand 'as an eternal rule to all men' because truth and the keeping of faith, the preservation of mankind, the not harming of others in life, health, liberty, or possessions - all these ... are precisely those things which are involved in taking the moral point of view ..."22

Such in essence is the message of seventeenth and eighteenth century social

21The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: His Theory of Obligation (Oxford 1966) 22J.R. Carnes, "Whether There Is a Natural Law," Ethics LXXVII (1967), 124




contract and natural law theorists. Such assertions as "all men are equal" are then seen to be neither trivial tautologies nor patent falsehoods but recommendations to look at the world from the perspective of man's common humanity rather than from the traditional perspective of his differences. "Not man as a

priest or a soldier, as the member of a guild or an estate, but man as a bare human being, a 'masterless' man appeared to be the solid fact ... The individual is both logically and ethically prior."23 And actually prior. For if the Lockean model was primarily a logical device for clarifying the ingredients in the mix of social and political organization, Locke was tempted to lapse into the empirical mood when directing his thoughts toward America.

The equality paradigm found its first secular articulation in a natural rights idiom among the Levellers, the radical left of the Puritan revolution. In Locke it received systematic formulation. W. von Leyden finds in that formulation

nothing but logical confusion. He tells us that Locke "starts with certain statements of fact, i.e. statements about human nature, containing no judgments of value; he then passes to certain metaphysical and theological statements which contain no moral words either; from these statements he draws a conclusion about what men ought to do, as if the conclusion of a valid argument could contain anything, e.g. an 'ought,' which is not contained in the premises."24 The

cleavages von Leyden finds between factual assertions, definitions, metaphysical and theological statements, and moral judgments, all of which he argues Locke looks upon as statements of the same logical type and thus accessible to the same forms of inference, are easy to find if we neglect to "see" the theological- metaphysical foundation as a total perspective of man, the world, and his creator, a view of man as created by a benevolent, all-wise being who manipulates the raw stuff of the universe to provide for that universe to fit His plan.

The von Leyden thesis may be challenged at his initial rendering of Locke's statements concerning human nature. These statements are not merely factual; they are shorthand guides for human conduct; they express commitments and recommendations to look at man as truly human only when he does such and such, develops such and such. To say that man is rational, is, for Locke, to say: man has a rational faculty. He is expected to use it and to use it in accordance with certain standards, before he either "assents" to the truth of a proposition, or "consents" to a rule of human behaviour. His whole moral/political/epistemo- logical theory is normative, that is, this is what man can do, is expected to do, at times does not do, and yet ought to do. It is also normative in Locke's more extended sense. It is commanded by God, the supreme Law-giver, Creator, and Sustainer of our being and our happiness.

The natural rights thesis, supposedly a classic example of the violation of the so-called "Humean Law," with its arguments from the being of a God to "oughts," from "observations concerning human affairs" to "oughts," committed neither the naturalistic fallacy nor "violated" the "Humean Law." The state of nature, as conceptualized by Locke and understood by the Levellers and Jefferson, was not a descriptive, anthropological study of how men actually behave in a politi-

23G.H. Sabine, A History of Political Theory (3d ed. New York 1961), 432-3 24"John Locke and Natural Law," Philosophy xxvI, no. 1 (1956), 30-1




cal and moral vacuum. It was rather a logical model of a normative theistic/ legal/moral order to which all men were bound. It was a description of the rules under which all were to live, which all men would acknowledge with experience and development, and which all men were capable of knowing and obeying. It offered a description of man, but man as a moral agent, bound from birth by a set of rules made by his Creator for his well-being and happiness. The "natural"

equality of men was a normative equality, an equality as moral agents. Their "natural" characteristics, their capacity to reason, their inclination to seek

society, were seen as validating conditions for an equality of rights to life, liberty, and property as necessary constituents for the realization of their role as moral agents.

In Jefferson natural rights theory became a living reality. Under the Levellers it felt its first birth pangs. Under Locke it experienced its conceptualization into a systematic political theory. Under Jefferson it left the security of the womb to face the realities of the world of men and nature. Through Locke natural rights had become the accepted formula following the "Glorious Revolution" but it was to be actualized only among the landed few with the tacit acceptance of the many. Jefferson was to seek its actualization for the many.

For Jefferson it seemed that only in his land could the natural rights message be given concrete expression. Now men could create in the image of the Great Builder, moulding from the tabula rasa of a vast wilderness men as their Creator meant them to be and to live, in harmony and cooperation, bending nature to their will as God Himself had done. America was to be the great laboratory and like any laboratory was to be shut off from the encroachment of alien and dis- ruptive influences which could obstruct man's understanding of the laws of human and social relationships. Jefferson had only to turn to England to see "the pauperism of the lowest class, the abject oppression of the labouring, and the luxury, the riot, the domination and the vicious happiness of the aristoc- racy."25 Against this backdrop, America offered an equality of socioeconomic conditions which would render feasible an experiment in man's capacity to govern himself.

Jefferson's natural rights theory was not developed in vacuo. On the contrary, he could say, convincingly, that the authority of the Declaration of Independence "rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day." He was expressing the "common sense of the subject." Americans had been nurtured in it from the pulpit, the political platform, and their history. Natural rights for them had a definite and specific content. It was those rights and liberties Anglo-Saxons had enjoyed prior to the Norman Conquest, which Englishmen had wrested from their kings as evidenced in Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Puritan struggle, and the "Glorious Revolution." The great American experiment in self-government was but the logical extension of the historical, spiritual, and juridical claims of Englishmen. The Lockean concepts, "transformed into oper- ating modes of behavior, yielded the swift victories of American democracy."26

25Quoted in G. Chinard, Thomas Jefferson: the Apostle of Americanism (2nd ed., rev. Ann Arbor 1966), 492 26L. Hartz, "The Rise of the Democratic Idea," in The Advance of Democracy, ed. J.R. Pole (New York 1967), 20-1




Utility: a new egalitarian sub-paradigm

Natural law thinking ... is essentially an assertion of faith in a standard of values, rather than a demonstration ... [Its] effectiveness ... depends upon the existence of a sufficient number of persons who ... feel driven to assert the same faith ... Once ... the spell of a common intuition is broken the standard appears suspended in mid-air devoid of any apparent basis in reality.27 So broken, the common sense of the eighteenth century became the nonsense of the nineteenth. For the English faith in natural law had been grounded in a stable social and economic structure whose very stability and permanence testified to its conformity with the very structure of the universe. Bentham's reaction to the Blackstonian fusion of natural law and English law was in part a reflection of the clash between the changing realities of the social and economic system and the fictitious descriptions of the legal system. Natural rights theory with its sup- port of outmoded socioeconomic interests could not, for Bentham, serve as a viable formula for the extension of the egalitarian claims of the middle class. He offered a new formula for an egalitarian paradigm, utility, "the rightful supre- macy of the universal-interest-comprehension principle ..."; "... interests all to be advanced, without any exception, all to be considered."28

Bentham admitted that behind his appeal to the principle of utility lay commitment to human rights as a constitutive of that very principle: "It is because without rights there can be no happiness, that it is at any rate determined to have rights."29 But Bentham was determined to expose the hollowness of the rhetoric of natural rights and to offer the English people a system of rights and

equalities that would be meaningful because it was enjoyed, guaranteed, and enforced. Faced with the incongruities between rhetoric and reality, between the

"ought" and the "is," he was determined to ground the "ought" on the only thing that he felt mattered, the human feelings of suffering and joy. Rights that ought to be are to be grounded in the very nature of men, not as spiritual beings "nearly equal when all the events of their lives are considered as so many inci- dents in a great moral drama,"30 but on a more mundane basis still linked by a common identity. Men are equal as sentient beings. The consideration is not: do

they talk, can they reason; but can they suffer? The capacity to feel pain and

pleasure is the ground on which the organization of man's private and public life is to be built. Real rights are translatable into operational realities, being matter of fact in two senses, depending for their efficacy on the sovereign masters of human action and volition, pain and pleasure, and on the effective machinery of the state for the infliction of the pain (obligation and sanction) and the enjoy- ment of the pleasure (right).

Just as natural rights theorists, though indirectly, grounded the existence and

justification of the primary rules of any social group on the desire to survive, so in turn utilitarians grounded moral experience upon the desire for happiness and the avoidance of pain. In each case, the appeal is made to what in fact men desire and find good. In Bentham's case, however, the appeal to psychological

27j. Stone, Human Law and Human Justice (Stanford 1965), 80 28The Works of Jeremy Benthamn, %u. J. Bowring (reissued New York 1962), III, 462, 452 29Ibid., in, 220 30E. Halivy, The Growth of Philosophic Radicalism (2nd ed. London 1952), 137




realism misfired because of the logical and moral impossibility of reconciling an altruistic ethic with an egoistic psychology. But if in his theoretical analysis of human nature Bentham raised an insuperable barrier between his normative axiom and his "scientific" analysis of human motivation, in his role as moral agent and social reformer he belied an egoistic psychology. His life of reform was sparked by his acute anguish at the sight of the unnecessary and brutal

suffering of those caught in the meshes of the legal system of his day. Locke's attack on those "true Rebels," the wielders of arbitrary, illegitimate authority, reveals the same bitter denunciation. No man can ignore such "beastly" actions because they affect them through the very mechanism that moves man to action, the feeling of suffering and pain. When so affected can any man be blind to what is afoot?

The common good: redefinition of a spiritual paradigm If Bentham had to discard natural rights as a formula for social reform because of its contemporary complacent identification of the "ought" with the "is" of established mores, so in turn did Green have to reject the utilitarian formula, with its identification of the public interest with the interest of the middle class. Once middle-class interests were achieved, its spokesmen sought to stem the tide of working-class participation in its benefits. In this new crisis over the definition of public interest, the concept of egoistic interests could no longer act as a reforming medium. Green's appeal was to the conscience, not the interest, of his middle-class audience.

For Green, God was still with us, revealing Himself in the unfolding of our

"possible" selves and our "possible" societies. The dynamism and faith of the Leveller, the belief in a world pulsating with divine life, were to be restored but in nineteenth-century form, as a divine teleological process, a progressive development of spirit as manifested in man himself and his social and political institutions. The social message is the same, the priesthood of all believers, the ultimate worth and value of the common man. The egalitarian premise was to be translated into

reality as seen in Green's concern for the suffering poor and the degradation and

corruption of their existence, as seen in his denunciation of slavery and his demand for a universal franchise.

Benthamite utilitarianism tended to reduce man to a lower order of species, to the animal world, and even to a non-sentient materialistic level. Kant strained to lift him out of his inevitable inseparability from the animal, naturalistic plane. Natural rights in the hands of the Levellers, Locke, and Jefferson, never suc- cumbed to a reductionism of man either to mere sensation or to pure spirit. Beyond the negative and limited conception of a human being as wanting life and hating pain, they offered a positive conception of man. He is a being with worth, a free, choosing, evaluating being. Green, building on natural rights, gave that perspective deeper moral and spiritual substance. The Kantian insight of man as valuable and to be valued as an end in himself, not merely as a means, was brought down to earth. Man's absolute value was to be actualized in the mundane, secular atmosphere of political and social activity. Through a community of first class citizenship all men were to find their self-realization in a common good in which all equally shared.




Just as the greatest happiness principle was advanced to help England through a crisis in community, so too Green's common-good principle was offered as an explanation of a descriptive reality but primarily as a rallying cry for reconcilia- tion for a disintegrating community. But there was not enough social cohesion for Green to verify community by making it. Green wavered between assuming its reality in his day and attempting to verify it by a call to the middle class for lives of self-sacrifice. The response was inadequate. Workers would in time resort to the utilitarian formula: one's interests can only be heard, considered, and satisfied if one holds effective political power.

Green's common good was no more able to contain the autonomous moral agent of twentieth-century liberal-democratic society than were Bentham's utility principle or Jefferson's natural rights formula. In face of the frustrations of seek-

ing a common objective standard, a final vision of the truth, amid the confusing array of objective criteria advanced, liberal-democratic man is taking a new look at rationality. To be reasonable and to arrive at reasonable decisions in matters of conduct need not require the search for and achievement of rationality as a set of unchanging, eternal verities. The clue to a new way of looking at rationality could be found in the first yearning for the achievement of human equality and freedom in the priesthood of all believers, in the community of dissenting church and Cromwellian ranks, in the American democratic experiment, and culminat-

ing in Green's community of first class citizens. They came to see "... the life of reason as it is, in which doubt and vagueness, incompleteness and disagreement, are just as much the inspiration of our thinking as they are its flaws ... in which each of us finds his own security not in a final system of conclusions to which others must accede, but in an endless process of investigation in which all can

join ..."31 Jefferson's dictum held firm. The only unchanging element is the inalienable rights of man, the moral point of view, respect for the dignity and value of human personality. A political process that allows for an equal consideration of the opinions and claims of others becomes the avenue to reasonable and humane social existence.

7. The interdependence of "ought" and "is"

I have tried to show the unreality of a dichotomy between facts and values in

theory and practice. I have argued that man inevitably "sees" and evaluates within conceptual frameworks or paradigms that fuse descriptive, evaluative, and

hybrid categories that defy separation and analysis. I have noted certain facts of particular relevance to such paradigms. There are the "brute facts" of the human constitution and condition that reveal a common core of values, rules, and characteristics that seem intrinsic to our very way of thinking of man and as man. There are the facts which our paradigms focus on as relevant and

significant. Turning specifically to the development of Anglo-American liberal-democratic

theory, I have noted a framework of consistency, the liberal paradigm of equality which provided the landmarks to guide men in their practical assertions. I have briefly traced the development of three sub-paradigms of this equality paradigm, 31Corbett, Ideologies, 169




natural rights, utility, and the common good, noting the interdependence of facts and values in the articulations, conceptualizations and actualizations of these

paradigms. Equality was the recurrent theme of these men. They saw equality as both

fact and value and as fused fact/value. (1) Men have an equality of capacity to know and obey the primary rules of social existence. Any reasonable, sane man is meant to see their "point" and behave accordingly. (2) Equality as fact is evidenced in certain truisms about human beings - their vulnerability and falli-

bility and the consequent need for cooperation and organization and hence for the primary rules noted above. (3) Equality as a formal principle is evidenced in the logical demand for consistency, treat like cases alike; in the legal concept of impartiality, treat similar persons similarly; in the moral concept, treat persons as equals when considering their opinions, interests, and needs. (4) Equality as a normative/descriptive/predictive concept is seen in their analysis of what is meant by a human being. Man is a creature who wants to, is expected to, and ought to, avoid pain, be a free, choosing, deliberating human being. (5) Equality is seen as an intrinsic quality of worth and value in human personality. (6) There is an equality of rights or claims to certain behaviour and attitudes on the part of one's fellow creatures.

These aspects of equality find their rationale within the master paradigm of an ideal of equality. Its basic political principle is: recognize and build on the fundamental equality of men as men. Conceptually strip men of the artificial

inequalities and distinctions of convention and "see" them as members of a common humanity. Make your institutions reflect this fundamental oneness.

Equality of rights spells out what human personality is and what it requires in the way of behaviour and attitudes on the part of others. Equality as a formal

principle is but a rephrasing of one's commitment to the equal worth of persons. Equality of capacity may be seen as the validating condition for the claim to

equal rights, while equality as fact sets out the limiting factors in the human condition which bind us in a common destiny and a common dependence and

explain why we have the rules we do.

My analysis of the evolution of Anglo-American liberal-democratic thought has brought out the complexity of the dimensions of the "is" which impinge on the "ought." I have noted: (1) The very conceptual implications of an "ought" imply the "is" of an agreed right way of doing things in terms of criteria, principles, rules, and values; imply, as well, good reasons for moral and political recommendations, reasons grounded in the needs, interests, and wants of human

beings. (2) The "ought" confronts the "is" of man's basic constitution and condition. The "brute facts" of human nature and its condition Berlin and Hart

analysed showed that man in a social/political context is a rule-governed, value- committed being. (3) The "ought" confronts the "can," the need to reconcile itself with the limitations and capacities of man as such as well as with the limitations and capacities of man within his particular social and historical setting. (4) The "ought" confronts the facts judged significant and relevant within one's normative paradigm. (5) The "ought" confronts the "is" of the established, recognized mores of one's society and one's place in that society. The relation between "ought" and "is" in (1) to (4) is one of close, one might venture to




argue, logical interdependence. Yet beyond the obvious truism that "ought" implies "can," one must know what one is about in arguing such a position. While it is true that the contextual implications of normative discourse imply appeal to

agreed right ways of doing things, this does not entail that such agreed right ways of doing things do in fact exist. Only acquaintance with the actual situation would entitle one to say whether this is so or not. And for those of us committed to the moral autonomy of liberal-democratic man, we can never acknowledge the entailment of the "ought" and the "is" in terms of any final, specific, right way of doing things. What one can maintain at this level of the is/ought confrontation is that it is incumbent on one engaged in normative discourse either to point to such agreed right ways of doing things or to set about trying to estab- lish with one's community such agreed criteria, principles, or rules; otherwise one is left at best to moral isolation, at worst to the trivial business of venting one's feelings or describing one's tastes. In either case one is not engaged in normative discourse as it is generally understood.

Again, one can argue that by definition social organization and social existence presuppose acknowledgment of certain rules and that our positive attitude to "man" carries with it a commitment to the value of human existence and the avoidance of human suffering. But here again the substance of Hart's minimum content of natural law can take multiple forms and arouse considerable dispute as to the justice and reasonableness of any particular set of rules against lying, stealing, etc., and there can be considerable argument as to what constitutes "survival" and "suffering" as well as about other characteristics we associate with being a "human being." The "demon" in our general evaluative language refuses to be tied to any final descriptive characteristics or criteria and so enables us to use such language to rebuild our moral worlds.

Again, our paradigms change. We come to adopt new perspectives that then

change for us the significance and relevance of the facts within our paradigms. In short, the case for the logical interdependence of "ought" and "is" in (1)

to (4) can be made if we limit ourselves to the contention that in each case the

"ought" requires factual moorings, a set of agreed right ways of doing things, a

grounding in the basic needs, wants, interests, and capacities of human beings, a set of facts judged significant and relevant within our paradigms. It is only in transitional phases when our "oughts" are cast adrift from their old descriptive characteristics and criteria and have not yet found their footing in new established ways of thinking and doing in a normative context that our "oughts" look as though they can be, and logically and morally ought to be, independent of

any factual moorings whatsoever. When one turns to (5), the confrontation of the "ought" with the "is" of

established mores, there is not the same tendency to argue for a logical inter-

dependence of these realms. Granted Hart's point that any social organization as such entails a system of norms, a minimum content of natural law, it is still

logically and morally reasonable to ask: Ought this established system of mores to prevail? Do Hart's minimum norms as established in this society conform with justice and equity? Liberal political theorists have raised this question implicitly or explicitly. They have challenged the normative system of their time and place, and judged it wanting in the light of reason, conscience, and justice




as expressed in their particular paradigm. They sought not to destroy mores but to moralize them, to make the established normative order conform to and actualize their ideal picture of their time and place. Having achieved that objective, those who came to accept the new normative transformation then would tend to equate morals and mores, to reduce morals to mores. But the autonomous moral agent shies away from such identification. "Ought," he argues, may at certain times be fused with the "is" of conventional mores in a morally satisfactory way. But in most cases it is never completely fused. Given our capacity for moral development and the changing needs of man and society we must not be lulled into such reductionism. For it would deny to us our autonomy as moral agents and it would rob the "ought" of its commendatory and recommendatory role as a tool for moral and political innovation and reform.

To those who approve of the established mores of their society there is a tendency to define morality in deontological terms, to see morality as a set of commonly acknowledged rules. What one ought to do is just a matter of locating one's action within the ready-made slots of that established system. This language of morals breaks down once that established system is questioned. Men move to a higher level of analysis, to a teleological perspective - what purposes do the rules serve? Why have rules? Do the rules serve the ends of justice, equity, and humane existence?

As reformers and innovators, men tend to use their moral vocabulary to change their world. As conservers, they tend to use it to justify their status quo. Whether normative language is being used for innovative or conservative purposes can only be determined by a study of the historical setting in which the language is spoken.

I noted that in the contextual implications of a normative situation the individual moral agent ultimately must decide for himself whether he ought to do X. Despite the contextual implications of a moral situation as embracing the fact of community, those of us who find ourselves within the liberal-democratic ideology are committed to this stance. With Locke we would admit that our assent, our consent, must be moralized, must be given as expressions of ourselves as autonomous, rational, moral agents. We cannot shirk the personal responsibility for the determination of what our duties are and whether we will carry them out. Inevitably, then, given our perspective, we can never achieve a final fusion of the "is" and the "ought." Given our commitment to personal freedom we are bound to find an inherent friction between our moral convictions and any shared consensus on values and ends. And when our convictions are at war with the values of our society, others may well judge those convictions to be expressions of mere subjective likes and dislikes. To dispel these doubts the onus is on us to make our moral claims "stick" by trying to build, with our community, a new ideal picture of our time and place.

This account of the rationality of normative discourse is not an index to actual behaviour of moral agents. It is an ideal model, an evaluative reconstruction of the "moral point of view" as seen from the perspective of liberal-democratic man. Of necessity in such reconstruction we are going beyond a meta-ethical position to a recommendatory one: "see" morality in this way, admit that in your more enlightened, "best" moments, you do think and act in this way. If, in




our more sophisticated moments, we dub such analysis "naive" and proceed to examine the "real" world of the interplay of power groups - focusing our attention on who gets what, when, how - we are, I believe, unconsciously resting our

position upon the implicit acceptance of certain common ends and agreed right ways of doing things. Recent years have brought to the attention of political scientists the danger of neglecting this underlying consensus or of taking it too much for granted. As the bargaining, pluralistic societies of the United States and Canada have tottered close to the edge of the Hobbesian state of nature, the

community on which political scientists implicitly rest their realistic analyses has threatened to lose its operational reality.



Documents

A Model of Normative Discourse for Liberal-Democratic Man: Another Look at the Is/Ought Relation