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Abstract
Our societies are marked not only by disagreements on the good life, but also by disagreements on justice. This motivates philosophers as divergent as John Gray and Chandran Kukathas to focus their normative political theories on peace instead of justice. In this article, I discuss how peace should be conceived if peace is to be a more realistic goal than justice, not presupposing a moral consensus. I distinguish two conceptions of peace to be found in the literature. One, ordinary peace, conceives of peace as non-violent coexistence based on modus vivendi arrangements. Modus vivendi arrangements, in turn, are explained as a special kind of compromise. Ordinary peace does not presuppose a moral consensus and is therefore realistic, but at the same time it is too minimalist and undemanding to be satisfying. The other conception of peace, ambitious peace, can be found in Kukathas’s work. It is a conception of peace ‘beyond compromise’, not minimalist and undemanding, but, I will argue, not realistic because presupposing at least a second-order moral consensus. In the end, I advocate a division of labour between both conceptions of peace under the umbrella of an overarching ideal of peace.
Acknowledgements
This paper was originally presented at the ‘Peace or Justice’ conference in Hamburg on 14–15 July 2011. I would like to thank all participants for the discussion. More recently, the paper has profited from Simon May's extremely helpful comments.
Notes
1. For elaborated criticism along these and similar lines see, for example, Wenar (Citation1995) and Weinstock (Citation2006).
2. I do not want to go into the recent debate about the proper understanding of ideal and non-ideal theory and the question how utopian or ‘aspirational’ political philosophy should be. While some philosophers find Rawls’s theory still too realistic or ‘fact-sensitive’ (Cohen Citation2008), proponents of a more peace-centred political philosophy will generally find Rawls’s theory too unrealistic or utopian.
3. For a survey of the ‘realist countermovement’, see Galston (Citation2010).
4. A ‘non-political’ liberalism can be perfectionist, but it can also be non-perfectionist, like, for example, a straightforwardly egalitarian or libertarian form of liberalism. While perfectionist liberalism is surely ‘comprehensive’, the latter forms are not. One should therefore be sceptical about the dichotomy of ‘political’ versus ‘comprehensive’ liberalisms (Gaus Citation2004). For a perfectionist perspective on modus vivendi arrangements, see Wall’s contribution to this volume.
5. Some modus vivendi theorists quite explicitly accept a ‘public justification’ theory of legitimacy. Bernard Williams: ‘I shall claim first that merely the idea of meeting the BLD [Basic Legitimation Demand] implies a sense in which the state has to offer a justification of its power to each subject’ (Williams Citation2005, p. 4). David McCabe sees his modus vivendi liberalism as satisfying a basic ‘justificatory requirement’ (McCabe Citation2010, pp. 5–8, 153–165). Whether modus vivendi views can actually provide an attractive substitute for the consensus idea of the social contract tradition is debated in Rossi’s contribution to this volume.
6. Such theories might also acknowledge that what is most important will depend on the political context: in homogenous and harmonious societies other priorities can be set than in deeply divided pluralist societies. But in general, such theories’ ‘main goal is to leave the widest (morally) possible room for compromises made for the sake of peace, including cases in which peace is achieved at the expense of justice’ (Margalit Citation2010, p. 1).
7. Nonetheless, Gaus sometimes tends to identify a publicly justified order with a ‘just’ order (e.g. Gaus Citation2011, p. 446). In the introduction to the paperback edition of Political Liberalism, Rawls also acknowledges ‘that in any actual political society a number of differing liberal political conceptions of justice compete with one another’ (Rawls Citation1993, p. xlviii). But this is, on the one hand, quite a confined disagreement and competition (limited to liberal political conceptions of justice), and on the other hand it is not totally clear what the content of the overlapping consensus is supposed to be in light of this disagreement. Jonathan Quong, defending a Rawlsian political liberalism, also acknowledges that ‘there is, or can be, reasonable disagreement regarding what justice requires’ (Quong Citation2011, p. 132).
8. For example, the ritual scarring of children might not be adequately described as violence if it really is widely accepted in some culture (Kukathas Citation1997, p. 70).
9. Jones and O’Flynn also point out that compromises always are ‘agreed to’ (Jones and O’Flynn Citation2013, p. 119–120). They compare them (in this respect) with promises. From this perspective, there are no compromises without a certain ‘compromising’ process of making concessions and then agreeing. In contrast, Benjamin distinguishes between compromise as an outcome and compromise as a process (Benjamin 1990, pp. 4–8).
10. On moral compromises, see Benjamin (Citation1990), May (Citation2005) and Archard (Citation2012).
11. Compromising and modus vivendi are distinguished from bargaining and balance of power in Benditt (Citation1979), p. 27, Gray (Citation2000), pp. 20–21, Horton (Citation2006), p. 164, Weinstock (Citation2006), p. 244, Lister (Citation2007), pp. 17–18, and McCabe (Citation2010), pp. 136–143.
12. This account of compromises differs from some other accounts given in the literature. J. P. Day, for example, proposes the following definition of a compromise: ‘[A compromise is an] agreement between A and B to make mutual concessions in order to resolve a conflict between them’ (Day Citation1989, p. 472). But a compromise is not basically an agreement to make concessions. The agreement is rather the outcome of such concessions. And this agreement does not resolve a conflict, it simply contains a conflict. The conflict remains because all parties disagree on what the optimal arrangement would be (e.g. Benjamin 1990, p. 7). If they ceased to disagree, we would no longer have a compromise (because we would no longer have a conflict).
13. Simon May’s distinction between pragmatic and principled compromises is helpful: pragmatic compromises are made for instrumental reasons only, as a device to advance one’s goals (May Citation2005). These goals can be moral goals – and the conflict a moral conflict – so pragmatic compromises can still be moral compromises (Jones and O’Flynn Citation2013, p. 121). Principled compromises, on the other hand, are made for reasons that are independent from considerations about the advancement of one’s goals, but for epistemic or (non-consequentialist) moral reasons. See also Daniel Weinstock’s contribution in this volume.
14. As does John Horton (Citation2010, pp. 439–440).
15. Such procedures might often be identical to procedures as advocated by theorists of (minimal) procedural justice (Ceva Citation2008). However, on my account procedures have only instrumental value and instrumentally valuable procedures are not necessarily just procedures.
16. Only principled moral reasons will make the compromise be less dependent upon the balance of power. If compromises are made for pragmatic reasons, but with moral goals in mind, then such pragmatic moral compromises are dependent upon the balance of power as well. For an interesting discussion whether Rawlsian public reason can be reconstructed as embodying a form of compromise, see Lister (Citation2007).
17. As said, Rawls is mainly concerned with ‘stability for the right reasons’ and of course a modus vivendi cannot be stable in that sense because in a modus vivendi parties are moved by the wrong reasons. But Rawls should be (and probably is) concerned with ordinary stability as well; he should also argue that a modus vivendi is not stable in the ordinary sense because parties to a modus vivendi accept the arrangement for the wrong reasons.
18. In fact, Horton (Citation2010, p. 444) and Gray (Citation2000, p. 7), for example, do not claim that peace is the only thing that matters.
19. It is true that in the liberal archipelago many individuals will not be able to live ‘fully’ according to their conceptions of justice as long as they have to tolerate injustice on other islands. On the other hand, since regular violence is not only a violation of peace, but will also be seen as unjust by most groups, at least some aspects of their conceptions of justice will be realized in the whole society. On toleration and justice, see also Lægaard’s contribution to this volume.
20. Of course, the realism requirement was not violated if the sketched ambitious vision of peace beyond compromise was to be implemented without any consensus at all. But this is not Kukathas’s position (as we will see soon). And as I said, I would also like to retain something from the consensus ideal of the social contract tradition here.
21. This is so for at least two reasons. First, because every compromise implies mutual concessions, no compromise can be zero-sum, with one party getting everything. If I give my money to a mugger threatening to take my life, then we do not have a compromise. Second, as indicated above, if one party poses serious threats to violate already established modus vivendi norms, then the result is not a compromise.
22. Ordinary peace with its notion of compromise might still be the tool to conserve or at least substitute the consensualist conception of legitimacy from the social contract tradition. But ambitious peace obviously incorporates some consensus as well: a second-order moral consensus on how to deal with moral disagreement.
23. We then have a ‘Baylean’ grounding for both ordinary and ambitious peace, so to say. Hobbesian considerations, on the other hand, might still be important to explain the feasibility of (ordinary) peace, but not to ground the value for peace.