Heidegger

>For most of human history, for example, no one doubted the legitimacy of
>slavery; nor was this actively (consciously) *chosen*. The legitimacy of
>slavery was of universal status. The same reasoning applies to the second
>class status of women in society. By the criterion of overlapping consensus,
>therefore, you would have no basis for disputing slavery and the secondary
>status of women except merely that today we overlappingly say so.

Anthony, i don’t think that either slavery or the secondary status of
women are convincing counter examples that refute Rawls’ strategy
of an overlapping consensus as a means of (international) conflict
resolution and moral progress. A first requirement, for a strategy of
overlapping consensus to be applicable, is that the parties must be in
a *state of conflict*. So what conflicting parties are we to envision
here with your examples ? Are it the masters and the slaves that have
come to agreement -via overlapping consensus- to institute slavery ?
That would be quite counter intuitive from the position and perspective
of the slaves, don’t you think ? Or were it f.e. the 17thC Dutch and the
Britons that reached in overlapping consensus to go into the slave trade ?
I am not aware of the existence of any written documents to formalize
such trade, but if there are, the Dutch and Britons were certainly not
conflicting parties wrt the moral issue of slavery an sich. We have the
same analytical problem if we look at the issue of second class status
of women. Which are the conflicting parties here that, by employing
the strategy of overlapping consensus, ranked the women as secondary ?
Were it the men and the women (counter intuitive), was is a conspiracy
of the men among themselves (no conflict) ? Besides, this whole idea
of women being a secondary citizen is a modern western Beauvourian
expression. The submission of women to an inferior status in society
is not the norm, not nowadays, not 500 years ago, not 5000 years ago.
If this would truly be the case then mankind would have been extinct
thousands of years ago, or do you believe that raising your family is
the same as cattle farming or that all sex (incl. procreation) is nothing
other than rape ? Historically and antropologically speaking imo the
difference between the societal status of men and women (and to a
large extend the phenomenon of slavery also) can better be explained
in terms of a natural (but culturally contingent) division of labor. Of
course i am fully aware that the lives of slaves or women can be very
cruel and ugly, but in the long run these kind of border cases will proof
to be counter productive and lead to a dead end. We know it is a myth
that it were slaves that build the pyramids of Egypt. As good as we
know that the role of women in ancient China, Greece or Rome was
much more balanced and subtle than is commonly assumed and if you
doubt this you should read some Chinese love poetry, Greek tragedies
or Roman biographies. (and yes i know there is a lot more to say about
modernday slavery etc. etc.)

Anyway, the point is that Rawls’ strategy of overlapping concensus is
not designed as an empirical research program to describe or explain
the historical formations of social institutions like slavery or gender
inequality, no, it is intended as a pragmatic model of conflict resolution,
which, in stead of taking the route of confrontation, is aimed at the seach
for initial moral and political universals. Of course it is quite possible
that people have used such kinds of strategies in the past and that they
failed, but that is no argument to try them again today or in the future.

yours,
Jan

Posted on Sunday, June 4th, 2006 at 2:10 am
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