Political Reforms, People’s Expectations, and Justice
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24234/wisdom.v1i1.24Keywords:
Political Reforms, Justice, paradox, political reformsAbstract
The topic of the present paper derives from Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), and is sometimes labeled as the “paradox of conservative justice”. In The Methods of Ethics (1st edition, 1874) Sidgwick asks whether political reforms that have a morally desirable goal could justifiably be rejected simply on the grounds that realizing them would spoil the life plans of those who believe that the future would be like the past. The paradox is that “ideal justice” demands us to make reforms but “conservative justice” requires respecting people’s reasonable expectations, although making reforms seems to imply that those expectations will not be respected. The question seems to be about a moral dilemma. The government has an obligation to improve society and correct existing injustices, but surely it has also an obligation not to disappoint people’s natural expectations, partly created by the government itself. When the circumstances are such that correcting injustices happens to disappoint people’s reasonable expectations, the government simply cannot comply with both of its obligations.
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References
Raphael, D.D. (2001). Concepts of Justice. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 145. See also Raphael, D.D. “Conservative and Prosthetic Justice”, Political Studies 12 (1964).
Singer, P. (2008). “Sidgwick and Reflective Equilibrium” in R. Shafer-Landau (Ed.), Metaethics: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, Vol IV (Routledge, New York).
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Räikkä, J. (1998). ”The Feasibility Condition in Political Theory”, The Journal of Political Philosophy 6.
Braybrooke, D.& Lindblom, Ch. E. (1963). A Strategy of Decision. (The Free Press, New York).
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