kaplan criticism

8/13/2019 Kaplan Criticism

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2 2 TH E AM ER IC AN JOUR NAL O F JUR IS P R UDENC E

JUSTICE, HUM ANNATURE, A N D POLITICAL OBLIGA TION.By Morton A.Kaplan. New York: T he F re e Press. 1976

In Justice Human Nature and Polit ical Obligation Morton Kaplan, apolitical scientist at the University of Chicago, presents an analysis of thegood, th e just, human natu re, political obligation, and th eir interrelations.A l o n g t h e w a y h e c r i t i q u e s R a w l s a n d T o u l m i n , t h e s t a t e o f n a t u r etheorists, and other familiar figures and schools of thought in ethics andpoli t ical philosophy. To this more or less s tandard mode of inquiry andpresentation, Kaplan introduces a new analytical tool-systems analysis.Accordingly, the finished product sometimes appears classical and tradition-ally systematic, lending itself to a relatively simple comparison with past ef-forts of political philosophers; sometimes, avant garde, elusive, and wantingin any clear philosophical relatives.If humans and their political structures are viewed as homeostatic sys -tems as Kaplan argues they should be, they are not equipped to operate intheir social and political contexts under some one basic rule or some few,fund ame ntal princip les of justice.' In one sen se Kaplan's work can b e se enas a conceptual apparatus to make way for such a view. And since Kaplansees Rawls as holding to the opposing view, that one might isolate somebasic rules, Rawls predictably emerges as an antagonist, and as point offact, Kaplan's chief antagonist in the work; it is Chicago against Harvard inpolitical theory . At th e foundatio n of Kaplan's alte rna tiv e the ory of justiceis his test in principle a decision procedure of sorts, which makes inroadsinto his understanding of human nature and the substance of each of hisfour chap ters, Systems Analysis, The Good , The Just, and PoliticalObligation. In addi tion, it is his test in princip le which I believ e shou ld,and probably wil l , be the focus of fur ther scholarship on the work. Forthese reasons, this review is organized into three sections. I describe firstthe test and then how this test in principle is related to the main areas ofstudy in the book. Finally, I take a short, critical look at the test in princi-ple.

1. Morton A. Kaplan, Justice Human Nature and Political Obligation N e wYork: Free Press, 1976 , p. 111. Hereafter, all citations to this work will appear inthe body of this review as page numb ers in paren theses.


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VINCENT LUIZZI 203THE TEST IN PRINCIPLE

In Kaplan's estimation, a major problem in ethics is that of legislatingfor one perspective entirely from the framework of another. (l73) Kaplanapparendy i s suggesting that one may bring too much of his own situationand experience to bear on the solution of problems whose solutions requirea data i n ~ u t ore extensive or different in kind. The test in ~ r i n c i ~ l eancircumvent this problem; it permits an individual to detach himself fromhis 'accidental' setting in making judgments, but it is sufficiently contextualto permit meaningful moral judgments. . (104) How does the test inprinciple accomplish this? In describing the dynamics of the test, Kaplanpoints out that one may test social, political, and moral choices in amanner similar to his method of testing individual choices:

Consider a situation in which a man would be able to relive hispast in thought. He could be confronted with each of the branch-ing points of his major life decisions and allowed subjectively tolive the alternative lives. If individual choices could be tested inthis fashion, social and political and moral choices could be testedin analogous fashion by confrontations with different patterns ofsocial, political, and moral organization under different environ-mental constraints. (94-95)

It appears that what Kaplan means by testing choices is that oneevaluates or tests various courses of action. roles. life stvles. i .e. .choices, by comparing them, one to another, so that he might make an

ultimate choice: After experiencing these alternatives, the individual wouldreturn to his actual situation. He would then have to choose in the presenton the basis of the limited alternatives available to him. He now has astandard against which to judge his practicable choices. . (95) We sup-pose that the test in principle provides not only an apparatus with refer-ence to which one might choose, but also one that allows one to evaluate achoice once made. As an example of the workings of the test in principle,one might consider a Russian poet who has an opportunity to defect toanother country and who has a political choice to make as to whether toremain in Russia or, if not, to which country to defect. Now Kaplan seemsto place no rigid limitations on the scope of the comparisons made; itseems they may be of actual, possible, or probable choices. Thus our poetmay compare the alternatives of defecting to a fascist state, a democracy,an anarchist state, or remaining in Russia, even though America is, as amatter of fact, the only likely place he might defect to; he may considerwhet her he would prefer to remain in Russia and b e a poet o r go toCanada and train as an M.D . unlikely as the latter may be. It is againstthis backdrop of comparisons and preference orderings of more or less re-levant alternatives that the poet Anally chooses from the actual alternatives.It is in this manner that the test in principle guides one's choice.

Kaplan does discuss further how one should arrive at his final judgmentor choice and suggests at times that this further advice of placing oneself in

2. The following quotation first appeared in Morton A . Kaplan s acropolitics(Chicago: Aldine Publishing C o. , 1969 , pp. 42-43.


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VINCENT LUIZZI 205membership, and ceremonial fulfillment. (235) Even Kaplan's completecatalogue of human qualities is necessarily incomplete, for the accumulationof comparative evidence is unending, and consequently our knowledge ofman and society is always part ial. (203)

THE GOOD THE JUST AND POLITICAL OBLIGATIONWith this initial discussion of the test in ~ r inc ip le nd human nature,

elements of which ~ermeateKadan's work. we can now adumbrate moreeasily those elements of Kaplan's theory of the good, justice, and politicalobligation, that are essential parts of the archetechtonic he is constructing,so that the structure of his enterprise can be grasped. His actual discussionof these, it should be noted, spans the larger part of the work.

According to Kaplan, a human system's (say X's) choice of goals is thatsystem's good (82) and this choice is made via the test in principle. (183)When X claims that Y is a good for him, this is tantamount to his sayingthat he values Y that attaining Y is one of his goals. But this does notimply that Y is v lu ble to X. It is only evidence that Y is valuable to X.(82) X may have had incorrect information when he decided that Y was ofvalue. is valuable to X when X judges Y to be good with correct informa-tion. (82, 92)

Regarding justice, Kaplan claims in his chapter, The Just, that thethrust of my argument in this chapter, as distinguished from that made byJohn Rawls, is that justice is related to values generated by human naturein actual circumstances. (167) We recall from the discussion above thathumans, by nature, are value producing systems. We now need to explore.how this good is related to the just to understand Kaplan's view of justice.That relation involves the individual's perceiving that certain rules, or theiust, are needed to allow for what he values and that certain institutions. inturn, are requi red to keep these rules of justice in force:

The individual sees his empirical circumstances, including thephysical and social env ironment, as parametric givens on thewhole. If he is reflective, he will then have a perception of whatis good for him in this system; of the social rules required in gen-eral to maintain these goods, tha t is, of the just in this society;and of the institutions and practices required to maintain theserules, that is, of the good for society. More than this, he will re-flect upon the differences between the different types of socialsystems in which he participates. (175)

The last sentence quoted above suggests the use of the test in principle,which Kaplan usually invokes whenever comparisons are made. And indeedit does have a role here; the test in principle provides an iterative proce-du re that permits a weak ordering of different sys tems, (159) presumablyfrom which the individual may choose.

Although there is no answer to the questions, What is the just societylike? and What is the se t of rules of a just society? , it is possible tosketch some general features of the just or of a just system of rules; in ad-dition, one can make sense of the question of what the optimal set of rulesat a particular time and social sett ing is. First, justice is a regulative goal


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206 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL O F JURISPRUDENCEtoward which we strive. 181) Justice does not exist in the abstract. It iscalled into being by human activity. Its scope is dependent upon the par-ticularities of being. It represents a tendency to become, that is, to enterinto a greater fullness of being. (245) Further, modern systems of justicehave as a strength their generality, which insures conflict .among rules intheir application to cases and requires a 'balancing' of considerations in thedetermination of particular cases. 178) Of the panoply of systems of jus-tice, it appears that a democratic system is most just or optimal at thistime. since it is better than anv rivals 210) and it allows for the ex~ression,of fundamental features of man's nature-being moral and autonomous.180-181. 210),Kaplan's view of political obligation is derived from his more general

view of obligation, which in turn draws on his theory of the good. If Y isgood for and wishes to accomplish his good as determined by the testin principle, and he will so wish, he ought to accomplish Y 183) One'sparticular obligation to support a political system rests not on any contractmodel involving consent, but rather the individual's interest in good in-stitutions. 200) How does this fit the model above that links obligationwith one's interest in. or his wish to accom~lish.his own good? ~oc ie iv , t-self, is a system and we can speak of what i's good for thisusystem. Further,man ident es with this social system; its goals are thus his goals; what is agood for it is a good for him and hence he wishes to accomplish its good ashe would any of his goods; and if so, according to the general theory of ob-ligation, he is obliged to accomplish these goods and in this consists hispolitical obligation to support the system: . . man's interest in good in-stitutions arises out of the complex interrelationships of the individual withsocial systems-that is, out of his existential identifications. . 200) Ofcourse the obligation does not obtain when the institution is not good,when its eoals are not desirable: . . . oblieation lies in identification withthe capacity of a society . to facilitate desirable goals according to con-temporary understanding. 200) And we suppose that the recognition andselection of desirable goals or goods for society is done with the test inprinciple, just as the individual selected his own goals, since there is thesense in which society's goals are his through indentification and thus lendthemselves to evaluation in the same manner as any of his possible goals.

OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE TEST INPRINCIPLE AND THE WOR IN GENERAL

I believe that the ~ r i m a r v bservation to make about K a~ la n' s est inprinciple is that one never gets a precise formulation of the test. From thisstems a number of related queries and observations. We might first notethat Kaplan, in his discussion of the test in principle, is much like a legisla-ture that offers information on the advantages of a new law, how it differsfrom other laws, how to apply it, what it is designed to accomplish, and soon. without articulatine what this law is.

NOW it may be argU ed that Kaplan has intentionally avoided an analyticalor a statutory-like articulation of the test in principle to avoid the problemsassociated with such formulations, such as interpretation and their inabilityto account adequately for all situations that might arise, and especially be-cause he rejects the view that a single rule or set of rules can handle prob-


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VINCEN T LUIZZI 207lems of justice and ethics. (142-143) In fact, he likens such an approach toconceptua l jur i sprudence , whose advoca tes be lieved tha t cou r ts mere lyapplied legal rules to particular fact situations in a mechanical way, a schoolof thought t hat Kaplan considers discredited b eyond disp ute. (142-143) O nt h e o t he r h an d. K a ~ l a n o e s re fe r t o t h e t es t in ~ r i n c i ~ l es a standardI95)and not simply as a collection of some pieces ofladvick. Further, wouldKaplan have us reject his test in principle if one were to formally describeits advice? Are we to believe that, in rinciple one cannot precisely ver-alize the test in principle? Does K ap an believe that because so me deci-sion procedure requires our taking a wide range of variables into account,that procedure eludes an analytical articulation? And as to Kaplan's argu-ment that a sinele rule or set of rules is not suitable for human svstems,this does not explain why his test in principle does not lend itself to a pre-cise statement; at most it would explain why one should reject the test inprinciple were it stated as a single rule.Probably the fact that this sort of uncertainty arises over the test in prin-ciple, which test I have attempted to show is central to an understandingof the entire work, is itself a shortcoming of the book. And whatever Kap-Ian's view is on the formulation of the test in principle, I believe that amore susta ined d iscussion of th is te s t mav have h e l ~ e dK a ~ l a n o avoidwhat appears t o be a confusion that w e a k b s his condeptual 'schema. Kap-Ian, we recall, argues that we learn of our nature through comparative in-formation and makes the further claim that this is throueh the test in ~ r i n -Iciple. While it is true that the test in principle has us make comparisons inorder to choose and evaluate goods and systems of justice, it certainly doesnot fo l low tha t whenever we a re making com ar isons , or when we a relearning of ou r natu re through comparative evi nce collected about manin different places at different times, that we are employing some standardof evaluation o r choice, namely th e test in principle. I t would seem thatK a~ la n i ther needs to te ll us more in s ~e ci f i c bout th e uses of this ver-Isatile test in principle or make a narrower claim to the effect that man islimited, in deciding, evaluating, and discovering about himself, to usingcomparative information, w hich, in th e cases of deciding and evaluating, isordered by a test in principle. In other words, although it is not unreason-able to argue that the test in principle is closely related to man's nature,Kaplan's current formulation of this relation rests on a confusion.The foregoing presentation and critique of Kaplan's book has focused, aspointed out earlier, on the systematic interrelations of the most significantc laims and concepts tha t Kaplan deve lopes in the w ork . Th e book, ofcourse, has more to it and it is here, in these final comments, that I willfurther describe. observe. an d evaluate as ~ e c t s f th e book in an attemDtto fur the r fam i~ i i r ize u tu k readers wi th i First, t h e work has ~ e w e ~ i nand Marxist motifs runn ing through i t: Inte l l igent , creat ive , inqu ir ingminds a r e requ i red i f demo cra t ic sys tems a re to work in a mora lsense. (210) As man comes to a fuller awareness of th e meanin e of hisown existende, the insights gained from this knowledge produce a disposi-tion to change the world: to leave the realm of necessity and to enter thekingdom of free dom, in Marx's words. (9-10)Fur ther , to the mind t ra ined in phi losophy, the work may seem un-sophisticated at times. As we saw, Kaplan sometimes speaks of the nature


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2 8 TH E AM ER IC AN JOUR NAL O F JUR IS P R UDENCEof justice as being an ideal , sometimes as having a tendency to become,without any su pport ing metaphysics. H e offers a ra ther long and tediouscritiqu e of Toulmin s Reason n thics ostensibly to make more palatable,and remove doubts that might stand in the way of, his view on the good;yet he evades not only the issue of the logical function of this critique inthe argument he is developing, but also the issue of what sort of argument,if any, he is constructing:

As he (Toulmin) has made the most celebrated attack on the ob-jectivity of values, th e reader-who experience leads me to be-l ieve, wil l favor Toulm in s posi t ion ov er mine-wil l have hisdoubts removed before the positive exposition begins. Thus, al-though I rarely use what philosophers call technical argumenta-tion, I will have better prepared the way for my own discussionof objectivity. x)This leads to additional observations: that it is never clear whom Toulminsees as his audience and, consequently, it is uncertain upon what profes-sional stand ards the book should b e judg ed. Philosophical issues and figurespredo min ate th e work. Kaplan s position is as a political scientist. S ystem sjargon is usually defined, although occasionally Kaplan uses undefined bitsof system s jargon as if the audience, or some members of it, is well-versedin such lingo. Th e work, th en , as mentioned at th e outset of this review, isnot without its ambivalences. But however it is ultimately classified andevaluated, and putting aside any shortcomings mentioned, philosophers willfind Kaplan s a ttem pt to systematically deal with t he g ood, t he just, andthe obligatory pleasing; cr i t ics of Rawls may f ind an a l ly or leader ; andmany in and outs ide th e comm unity of scholars wil l find Kaplan s verysmooth, insightful, and intensely interesting commentary at the end of hiswork of the roles of governors, the president , and c i t izens in a moderndemocracy worthwhile.

Vincent Luizzi

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