Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning.

Bennett, John G.

O'Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructive Account of Practical Reasoning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. x + 230 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $18.95--This book provides a sketch of a somewhat Kantian view of ethics. A theme of the book is the supposed conflict between universalistic accounts of justice and particularistic accounts of virtue. The book argues that this conflict is illusory: virtue can be accommodated with a generally universalistic framework that is free from objectionable idealization and indefensible metaphysical assumptions.

The book begins in chapter 1 with an overview, finding contemporary views of justice to be predominantly universalistic, while contemporary views of virtue are predominantly particularistic, and argues that this state of affairs is neither historically typical nor defended by adequate argument.

Chapter 2 begins the book's account of justice and virtue by defending the claim that practical reason must employ abstraction, but that, contrary to the claims of particularists, such abstraction is act ethically damaging. The practical reason needed cannot be merely instrumental, it cannot simply assume a metaphysically substantial account of the good, and it cannot simply take for granted the constitutive norms of society or individuals' identities. Rather, it must be a critical reason constructed from a universalizability principle: "anything that is to count as reasoning must be followable by all relevant others" (p. 3; compare pp. 51 and following).

Chapter 3 argues that, contrary to the particularists, the focus of practical reasoning must be universal principles of action. The chapter discusses and rejects objections that such principles must be empty or must rigidly prescribe uniform actions in cases with relevant moral differences.

Chapter 4 attempts to establish the scope of ethical considerations, that is, exactly who must be able to follow universalizable principles. It seems to be taken for granted that these others we agents and subjects. The main claim of this chapter is that, since one typically assumes in acting that (1) there are other agents/subjects, that (2) these others can act on one or be acted on by one, and that (3) these others have limited but determinate powers, agents cannot consistently disregard these assumptions in adopting principles of action. However, because nothing is said to distinguish agents and subjects from such things as typewriters and automobiles, it is unclear exactly what is involved in assuming that others are agents and subjects rather then mere causal factors in the world.

Chapter 5 discusses the structure of ethical principles. It argues that obligations must be taken to be more fundamental than rights, on the grounds that there are (or that in principle there may be) obligations without correlative rights. To begin with rights and suppose that obligations emerge as mere correlatives of these is to rule out this possibility from the beginning, The book provides logically independent distinctions between perfect and imperfect obligations (those that do and those that do not give rise to correlative rights) and between universal and special obligations (those had by all persons and those arising from special relations).

Chapter 6 outlines the account of principles of justice. The key argument seems to be that ". . . [A] principle cannot be taken to be universalizable if it cannot be viewed as a principle for all, because its universal adoption (per impossibile) would render some unable to act, a fortiori unable to adopt that principle. It follows that no principle of injuring others (whether directly, or indirectly by injuring the social fabric or the shared natural world on which lives depend) can be universalized" (p. 163).

The book gives no further explanation of what a "principle of injuring" is. (One requiring injury? One permitting injury?) The usual difficulties with universalizability arguments are discussed, but I could not see how they were met. Next the argument moves, with no discernible additional argument, from the claim that one must reject principles of injuring to the claim that one must adopt a principle of rejecting injury.

The last chapter discusses virtues. Here the argument is that since principles of indifference and neglect cannot be universalized, care and concern must be required virtues.

Space limitations prevent discussion of much insightful and interesting detail. Overall, the book seems successful in sketching a broadly Kantian account of ethics. Those who seek precise formulations, rigorous argument, or detailed and thoroughly documented discussion of others' views, however, will find the book exasperating.