Justice, Holism and Principles

Justice, Holism and Principles

Andrew Mason

Published online: 3 June 2009

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Abstract Some moral theorists defend a holistic account of practical reasons and

deny that the possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of moral

principles. This article explores the implications of this position for theorising about

justice, which has often aspired to provide us with an ordered list of principles to

govern our institutions and practices.

Keywords Holism � Particularism � Principles � Justice

Many influential theories of justice aim to provide us with an ordered list of

principles. But there is a growing literature in moral theory that favours a

particularism which appears to cast doubt on the wisdom of such an approach. This

literature, which defends a holistic account of practical reasons and denies that the

very possibility of moral thought requires the existence of moral principles, implies

that there is no reason to expect a concept such as justice to be fully captured by any

set of general principles.1 I propose to explore the implications of this position for

theorising about justice.

Moral particularists stand opposed to the idea that moral reasoning must involve

the application of general principles to particular cases, whether implicitly or

explicitly. They do not deny the importance of both consistency and coherence

when making moral judgements, but argue that we cannot understand what either of

these requires on the model of subsuming particular cases under general principles

A. Mason (&)

Politics and International Relations, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton,

Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

1 Dancy (1983, 1993, 2004), McDowell (1979), McNaughton (1988). For a collection of essays on

particularism, some supportive, some critical, see Hooker and Little (2000). For a sustained critique of

moral particularism, see McKeever and Ridge (2006).

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Res Publica (2009) 15:179–194

DOI 10.1007/s11158-009-9087-1

(Dancy 1993, Chap. 4; Dancy 2004, pp. 3–5). They believe that in order to

understand the constraints that consistency and coherence place on moral

judgement, we need to recognize the holistic character of moral reasons, that is,

the way in which a consideration which counts in favour of an action in one case

might not count as a reason at all (or may even count as an opposite reason) in

another case where the circumstances are different. For example, in many cases the

fact that a person’s behaviour gives pleasure to others constitutes a reason for

praising his actions, but in other cases, such as when he tortures a cat because they

gain pleasure from watching him doing so, then this fact makes what he does worse,

and indeed constitutes a further reason for condemning it.2

The thesis of particularism is characterised in different ways by different people,

but in my view Jonathan Dancy’s most recent formulation is the most fruitful,

namely that ‘the possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the

provision of a suitable supply of moral principles’ (Dancy 2004, p. 73).3 This raises

the question of what is to count as a moral principle for the purposes of

particularism. I shall suppose that a moral principle is any general moral statement

which entails an invariant moral reason. So, for example, ‘lying is wrong’ is a moral

principle in the relevant sense if it entails that there is always a moral reason not to

lie, even if that reason does not establish in every case that lying is wrong when all

things are considered.4 There may also be moral principles of the form, ‘X is wrong

except under circumstances C’, which entail invariant moral reasons in the absence

of the specified circumstances. So, for example, ‘lying is wrong except when it is

harmless’ constitutes a principle in the relevant sense because it entails that there is

always a moral reason not to lie when lying is harmful. Given this characterisation

of what is to count as a principle, when critics of particularism maintain that the

possibility of moral thought does depend upon the existence of moral principles,

they are in effect claiming that moral thought is impossible unless at least some

moral reasons are invariant.

Even with this clarification, however, Dancy’s characterisation of particularism

stands in need of some refinement. Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge argue that

the possibility of moral knowledge rests on the existence of default principles which

in effect entail invariant moral reasons. These principles maintain that actions of a

2 Roger Crisp distinguishes between a weak and a strong holism. Weak holism maintains that ‘A feature

that is a reason in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, or always the same reason, in

another’, whereas strong holism goes further and rules out the possibility of invariant reasons. A strong

holism applied to practical reasons is hard to defend because we should surely allow for the existence of

reasons which always behave in the same way wherever they are found. Indeed Crisp gives the example

of causing pain to non-rational sentient beings, such as cats. That an action does so always counts against

it (Crisp 2007, p. 45).3 In earlier writings, Dancy characterised particularism in terms of the idea that what counts as a reason

in one case may be no reason at all, or an opposite reason, in another case. But he now describes this as

holism in the theory of reasons and distinguishes it from particularism, a thesis about the dependence of

moral thought on principles. McKeever and Ridge identify a number of different forms of particularism

(McKeever and Ridge 2006, pp. 14–20) and call Dancy’s most recent version ‘anti-transcendental

particularism’.4 So this account includes what W.D. Ross and others have called ‘principles of prima facie duty’ (Ross

1930, Chap. 2) and more generally what Dancy calls ‘contributory principles’ (Dancy 2004, p. 5).

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certain type are morally wrong (or morally permissible or morally required)

provided that there are no morally relevant features present when an action of that

type is performed which could overturn the judgement that it is wrong [or morally

permissible or morally required (McKeever and Ridge 2006, pp. 115–121)]. Rather

than refuting particularism, this suggests that it needs to be understood in such a

way that it allows that moral thought may depend upon the existence of default

principles but denies that it depends upon the availability of moral principles that

provide a full explanation of why an action is morally wrong or morally permissible,

including a full specification of what features are morally relevant in determining its

moral wrongness or permissibility in different circumstances and their role in

making that judgement.5 I describe these as ‘fully specifiable principles’ in what

follows.

We cannot move from particularism, so understood, to the impossibility of moral

principles of the relevant kind, because even if moral thought does not require the

availability of fully specifiable principles, it may nevertheless turn out, as a matter

of contingent fact, that particular moral concepts, including perhaps the concept of

justice, can be adequately captured in terms of such principles. Although moral

particularism does not allow us to conclude that principles of justice are impossible,

we may be able to show that (like many other moral reasons) the reasons which

count in favour of regarding a policy, law or institution as just or unjust—call them

justice reasons—have a holistic character.6 If a range of justice reasons do possess a

deeply holistic character, this may raise doubts about the value of striving to identify

principles of justice; and when combined with an endorsement of moral

particularism, it would cast doubt on whether it is reasonable to expect the concept

of justice to be captured without loss by any set of principles, no matter how

complex. Accordingly, in the first two sections of this article I explore whether

justice reasons display holistic tendencies in two key areas: firstly, in relation to the

just limits of freedom of expression and, secondly, in relation to just inequalities of

condition. In the light of these discussions I then address the issue of what

implications the holistic character of ordinary justice reasons, especially when

combined with moral particularism, would have for theorising about justice. I do not

attempt to defend moral particularism against the various criticisms it has attracted;

in my view it is nevertheless sufficiently plausible for its implications to be worthy

of consideration.

The Just Limits of Freedom of Expression

Many believe that there is a justice reason not to prevent people from expressing

their opinions which in a wide range of cases makes it unjust to do so. But this

5 Some particularists, such as Dancy, would also want to understand particularism as dening that the

possibility of moral thought depends upon the existence of Rossian principles of prima facie duty.6 This would still be consistent with the commonly held and plausible view that an institution or policy

being just or unjust always counts as a reason for or against that institution or policy (Hooker 2000, p. 9).

Even if reasons of justice are not holistic, the reasons that count in favour of something being just or

unjust may be.

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reason does not easily convert into a defensible principle of justice, for there are

many other cases where we think there is a justice reason to prevent a person from

expressing his opinions, for example, when his act of expression would constitute an

incitement to violence or racial hatred; when it would be defamatory; when it would

reveal facts about another’s private life that are embarrassing and which there is no

public interest in knowing; when it would be a form of false advertising; when it

would seriously compromise national security; when it would violate a confiden-

tiality agreement; when it would be a breach of copyright.

If, say, incitement to violence constitutes a justice reason to outlaw an act of

expression, one which needs to be weighed against the justice reason that we have

for permitting that act, then this case would not give us any grounds for doubting the

existence of principles of justice that govern acts of expression. Indeed it would

appear that we are in possession of two such principles which come into conflict in

the case at hand and which need to be weighed against each other. But there is a

different possible diagnosis of what is going on in cases of incitement: namely, that

there is no longer a reason not to intervene because the fact that the act constitutes a

case of incitement cancels the reason not to intervene. If this is so, we do not have

two principles competing against each other, but one reason that, in effect, silences

or—in Dancy’s terms—disables another. (He also believes that reasons can be

disabled by considerations that are not themselves reasons).

This would not, however, preclude the possibility of a general explanation of why

in cases of this kind the reason not to intervene is disabled. We might be able to

appeal to a conception of citizens as free and equal with certain moral powers, or to

a full blown conception of persons as autonomous moral agents, to explain why

respect for citizens, or respect for persons, in cases of incitement provides a reason

to intervene and no reason not to do so. Or we may be able to specify general

interests that freedom of speech is designed to protect, for example, a communi-

cator’s interest in being able to call something to the attention of a wide audience, or

that audience’s interest in being well informed and being able to judge for

themselves, or a bystander’s interest in not being subject to acts of expression which

inconvenience them or which they find offensive but cannot avoid (Scanlon 2003,

86ff); an understanding of the significance of each of these interests might then

provide the basis for explaining when and why our reason not to intervene to

prevent acts of expression is disabled.

The existence of disabling reasons would also be perfectly compatible with

formulating a general constraint on what kind of considerations can disable our

reason for not intervening. For example, they would be compatible with the idea

that an evaluation of the view expressed (say, a judgement that the view was false or

valueless) could never on its own act as a disabling consideration.7 Indeed none of

the observations I have made so far exclude the possibility of a principle which tells

us when it is just and when it is unjust to intervene to prevent an act of expression,

since they do not rule out the possibility of a principle of the form, ‘It is wrong to

7 I don’t myself think that this constraint, which rules out any content based restrictions, is ultimately

defensible since it appears to exclude the possibility of justifying laws against libel or against advertising

which makes false claims about a product, but it is compatible with a weak holism in the theory of moral

reasons. See Scanlon (2003, p. 161).

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prevent acts of expression from taking place except under circumstances C’ (Dancy

2004, p. 81). The challenge for someone who denies the possibility of such a

principle is to show (or at least give grounds for thinking) that we cannot spell out in

an exhaustive way the circumstances that disable the justice reason we have not to

intervene and which therefore should figure in the exceptions clause. The

complexity of the practical political reality we face may lead us to wonder whether

this is so, but it is open to defenders of a principled approach to argue that the

correct principle of justice for governing the restriction of acts of expression will be

correspondingly complex but nevertheless fully specifiable.

There are, however, ways in which the holistic character of the reasons which

count in favour of holding that something is just or unjust may raise doubts about

the value of formulating principles of justice in the context of freedom of

expression. Suppose that the reasons for intervening in cases of incitement do not

disable or silence the reason not to intervene, but merely lessen the force of that

reason. The reasons against restricting or preventing an act of expression might be

such that their strength depends on what other reasons are present and on what

particular circumstances obtain. (I have characterised holism as the view that a

consideration which counts in favour of an action in one case may not count as a

reason at all—or may count as an opposite reason—in others, but it might be

redefined so that the existence of considerations which affect the strength of a

reason is also sufficient to make those reasons holistic. Holism of this kind is

opposed to one standard picture which insists that the strength of a reason remains

the same whatever other reasons are also present, which would allow us to give a

rank ordering of reasons and the principles which express them). There may also be

cases where the presence of a feature, for example, that some act of expression is

merely intended to offend, doesn’t count as a reason to intervene, but nevertheless

reduces the force of the reason for not intervening, such that the injustice involved

would not be so great.8 In cases such as these the consideration acts as an attenuator

in Dancy’s terms.9 (Dancy 2004, p. 42). More generally, the strength of our reasons

for not intervening surely depends on the type of act of expression involved

(Scanlon 2003, Chaps. 5 and 8). In the case of political speech, these reasons may be

very strong given the interests that would be threatened by preventing a speech act

of this type from taking place, whereas in other cases such as hate speech these

reasons may be much weaker.

Dancy also draws attention to the possibility of intensifiers, the presence of which

increases the force of a reason. Consider a possible example in relation to freedom

of expression. The fact that a march at a particular time along a particular road in the

centre of a city will cause serious traffic congestion may be a reason to prohibit this

march even if that reason is not conclusive. But suppose also that there is an

alternative route which would have an equivalent impact in terms of conveying the

message of the march but would not cause the traffic problems. If that is so, then this

8 The presence of this feature may even disable the reason not to intervene when the offence caused

would be of a traumatic kind, as in the case of the neo-Nazi march through Skokie, which had a large

Jewish population that included survivors from the Holocaust.9 Dancy believes that reasons too can act as attenuators.


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consideration—that there is an alternative route—would appear to intensify the

reason to prohibit the march along that road at that time, perhaps enough sometimes

for it then to disable or silence the reason for allowing the march to go ahead along

the proposed route.

When reasons for prohibiting or allowing acts of expression interact with each

other, and one reason disables, intensifies or attenuates another, it may still be possible

to construct principles of the form ‘It is wrong to prevent acts of expression from taking

place except in circumstances C’, but these principles on their own would not give us

any guidance on the way in which different circumstances can and do affect the

strength of the reason not to intervene. This is enough to raise some doubts about the

value of striving to formulate these principles. Even if principles are discoverable, they

are likely to be extremely complex, and even when we have surveyed enough real and

imaginary cases to be justified in thinking we have identified them adequately, the

strength of the reasons they provide may still vary from one context to another.

Defenders of a principled approach—call them generalists10—often try to capture this

thought by saying that different principles need to be ‘balanced’ or ‘weighed’ against

each other, and then maintain that the weight of each principle will depend upon the

justification for it. But particularists will reply that this obscures rather than illuminates

what is going on, arguing that it is better understood in terms of the way in which the

presence of one reason (or of some other consideration) may attenuate or intensify

other reasons. Of course, these particular reasons or considerations may be directly

related to the general reasons or considerations that generalists refer to when

attempting to justify their principles. For example, in the context of determining the

weight to be attached to the principle that people should not be prevented from

expressing their opinions when it conflicts with the principle that, say, people should

not have to endure the effects of incitements to racial hatred, generalists might make

reference to the interests of the speaker or his or her audience, and the countervailing

interests of bystanders. Particularists will focus instead on the significance of each of

these interests in the specific case at issue, examining how they give rise to particular

reasons which may be intensified, attenuated, or disabled in that case. Particularists

maintain that rather than seeking out principles and trying to reach a general view of

the strength of each (or a view about the strength of each in some range of cases), we

would be better advised simply to study the behaviour of the reasons that obtain in

particular circumstances (where particular interests are at stake), to determine how

these reasons are affected by each other and by the presence of other considerations.

(This is not to deny that our understanding of the behaviour of those reasons in these

circumstances may be improved by examining their behaviour in related but different

fictional cases.11)

10 It might be thought that we should reserve the term ‘generalist’ for those who deny particularism by

arguing that the possibility of moral thought does depend on there being moral principles, but I shall use

the term more broadly to refer to theorists who maintain that we should strive to find (true or correct)

moral principles.11 On this issue I side with McKeever and Ridge against Dancy—at least to the extent that Dancy denies

that we can learn from fictional cases when trying to determine what to say about actual cases (McKeever

and Ridge 2006, pp. 154–158)—but I do not think that the way in which fictional cases can provide

illumination gives a reason to reject particularism.

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The Just Limits of Inequality

Most theories of justice include principles which govern the distribution of benefits

and burdens (even though there is widespread disagreement over the currency that

we should use to determine what counts as a benefit or burden and to measure their

size). Some theorists favour egalitarian principles; others favour prioritarian

principles which hold that there is a justice reason to give priority to benefiting the

worse off, or sufficiency principles which hold that there is a justice reason to

benefit those who are not in a position to lead a decent or satisfactory life.12 (I shall

characterise those who are unable to lead a decent or satisfactory life as needy). In

order to illustrate the way in which these reasons may have a holistic character, I

shall focus upon sufficiency principles, but parallel arguments would apply to

egalitarian principles or prioritarian ones.

Theorists who defend sufficiency principles usually suppose (plausibly in my

view) that the strength of the reason we have to benefit those below the relevant

threshold varies in relation to the distance that they lie below it. This would be

enough to show that sufficiency reasons have a holistic character under my revised

definition. Defenders of sufficiency principles may also think that an individual’s

choices can make a difference to whether there is a justice reason to benefit them. It

is this issue and its implications for theorising about justice that I shall focus upon.

It does seem to me that an individual’s responsibility for his plight makes at least

some difference to the issue of whether justice requires us to help him. Suppose, for

example, that we have to decide between benefiting two individuals who are in

need, one of whom is responsible for his plight (perhaps he acted recklessly despite

repeated advice and warnings from others) whereas the other is simply the victim of

brute bad luck (perhaps he was struck by an unexpected flash of lightning). Do we

really think that this difference between the two of them has no bearing at all on the

justice of helping one rather than the other? In my view, we should accept that

responsibility can make a difference here; the difficult issue is then how best to

capture that difference. There are a number of possibilities. (Each of the three views

I distinguish can allow that the strength of any justice reason to benefit someone

below the relevant threshold varies in accordance with the distance they lie below

that threshold):

(a) There is always a justice reason for benefiting a person who is not in a position

to lead a decent or satisfactory life regardless of whether they are responsible

for their own plight (and this reason is always of the same strength for a given

level of need), but when they are responsible for it, there is also a justice

reason for not doing so that has to be weighed against it in determining what

justice requires.

12 See Parfit (2000, 1998). For the distinction between equality, priority and sufficiency, see Arneson

(1991), Mason (2006, Chap. 5). There is now a large literature on the distinction between equality and

priority, much of it sparked by Parfit’s discussion: see, for example, McKerlie (1994), Broome

(forthcoming), Crisp (2003), Temkin (2003), Holtug (2007).


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(b) There is a justice reason for benefiting a person who is not in a position to lead

a decent or satisfactory life but this exists only when they are not responsible

for their plight.

(c) There is a justice reason for benefiting a person who is not in a position to lead

a decent or satisfactory life but that reason is less strong when they are

responsible for their plight.

Let me expand on, and clarify, each of these. (a) supposes that we need to

balance two conflicting reasons and judge which is the strongest. (b), in contrast,

treats choice as a disabler. The fact that an individual is responsible for his position

in effect silences the justice reason we have for benefiting him. (c) treats choice as

an attenuator. The fact that an individual is responsible for his plight does not

disable the justice reason for benefiting him, but it weakens that reason. It is also

worth distinguishing two different versions of both (b) and (c). One version

maintains that an individual’s responsibility for his neediness is a justice reason for

not helping him which either disables or attenuates our justice reason for helping

him, whereas the other version maintains that his responsibility for his plight either

disables or attenuates our reason for helping him without itself being a reason for

not doing so. If some version of either (b) or (c) is the correct account of our justice

reasons for aiding the needy, then these reasons appear to have a holistic character.

But are there any grounds for rejecting (a) as the correct account? The crucial

question here is whether the fact that an individual is responsible for his own plight

counts as a justice reason for not helping him. It seems to me that (a) is implausible

because defenders of it would have to think that there is a justice reason for

opposing even voluntary, charitable schemes for helping those who are responsible

for their needs, yet that is going further than those who believe that individual

responsibility makes a difference to our justice reasons to help others should

countenance. To this it might be replied that when a person is responsible for his

plight, he deserves to remain needy, so there is a justice reason not to help him.13

But we need to distinguish between the view that a person doesn’t deserve to be

helped and the view that a person deserves to remain needy. The former view, which

does not entail that there is a justice reason not to help those who are responsible for

their plight, has some plausibility, but the latter is surely too harsh. (If we reject (a)

on the grounds that there is no justice reason not to help those responsible for their

own plight, this is also a sufficient ground to reject those versions of (b) and (c)

which maintain as well that there is such a reason).

This is a superficial victory, however, since (a) might be revised in a way that

avoids my objection. For it might be maintained that there is a justice reason not to

force others to help a person when he is responsible for his plight, which has to be

weighed against our justice reason for helping him. (Parallel versions of (b) and (c)

might also be generated). This seems more plausible. In support of the idea that

13 It might also be argued that justice requires that even voluntary giving should be sensitive to the issue

of whether a person’s needs are self-inflicted, on the grounds that others whose needs are not self inflicted

might reasonably complain that their needs should be given priority. But at best this shows that there is a

justice reason to give priority to those whose needs are not self-inflicted, rather than that there is always a

justice reason not to help those whose needs are self-inflicted.

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there is a justice reason not to force others to help those who are responsible for

creating their own needs, it might be argued that to do so would be to sanction the

exploitation of the prudent. Those who do not take risks, for example, will be forced

to come to the aid of those who do so when those risks turn out badly. There is

plausibility to this claim in many circumstances, especially when some people fail

to insure against risks when they could do so, and others either take out the

insurance or do not take the risks. But is it always the case that forcing others to help

those who are responsible for their own needs is to sanction the exploitation of the

prudent? To exploit someone is to take unfair advantage of them. Sometimes at least

people decide to take risks which turn out badly when they could not have insured

against that happening, and where others routinely take the same risks without any

bad consequences. In these cases to characterise them as taking advantage of others

does not seem wholly appropriate. We might describe them as reckless, but that is

not the same as being exploitative, and it is not clear that their recklessness (at least

when it doesn’t harm others) provides a justice reason not to force others to help

them, especially if these others have acted recklessly but got away with it. In these

cases at least, the idea that there is a justice reason not to force others to help them

seems misplaced.14 If this is right, it is enough to show that even if we think the

revised version of (a) correctly captures a variety of cases in which individuals are

responsible for their own needs, the justice reasons that bear upon these cases are

deeply holistic in character. Whether we have a justice reason not to force others to

help those who are responsible for their own needs depends in part on the

circumstances in which they made the choices which turned out badly for them.

If we accept that in some cases there is a justice reason not to force others to help

those who are responsible for creating their own needs, the revised version of (a)

would still compete against those (revised, if necessary) versions of (b) and (c)

which also make this claim.15 Comparing these versions, (c) seems to me to be more

plausible than (b), for (b) seems far too harsh in its consequences. (c), unlike (b),

would also allow us to hold that the strength of the justice reason we have for

helping someone who is fully or partly responsible for his plight will depend upon

his degree of responsibility for it, which seems more plausible than holding that

there is some degree of responsibility that fully disables our justice reason for

helping a person whilst some lower degree of responsibility would have no effect on

it. (The revised version of (a) would also allow us to make this claim). But I do not

intend to defend (c) at length against those who would endorse (b) instead. (And

14 Forcing others to help in these circumstances may of course create a moral hazard because it may

provide incentives for people to take risks knowing that others will be forced to bail them out if things go

wrong, but it is not clear that this constitutes a justice reason as opposed to some other reason (deriving

from a concern with overall welfare) in some cases not to force others to help.15 Note that a defender of (c) can accept that whether a person is responsible for his plight makes a

difference to the strength of our justice reason for helping him whilst at the same time thinking that there

are other justice reasons—reasons of respect for persons, say—why we should not seek to find out

whether a person is responsible for their plight, or require people to disclose whether they are, when we

do not know what led to their becoming needy (Wolff 1998; Anderson 1999). Indeed these other reasons

may be thought of as disabling the justice reason we have for finding out whether a needy person is

responsible for his plight.


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indeed, I have offered little argument against those who would endorse sufficiency

principles that are choice insensitive, and no argument at all against those who

would reject the idea that there is a justice reason to benefit those in need). The

argument that follows will have force for those who endorse (b) or (c), thereby

accepting that the justice reasons for benefiting those in need have a holistic

character, or for those who endorse the revised version of (a) but accept that our

justice reason not to force others to help those who are responsible for their own

neediness can be disabled or attenuated by other considerations.

Does this holistic character of justice reasons in cases where people bear some

degree of responsibility for their own neediness lead to doubts about the possibility

of sufficiency principles of justice? Even if the justice reasons I have identified have

a holistic character, they would nevertheless allow us to draw a graph which plotted

the strength of the justice reason to benefit someone in need against their degree of

responsibility for being in a position of need, or against the strength of our justice

reason not to force others to come to the aid of those responsible for their own

plight. We could in theory plot a series of these graphs for different levels of need.

These graphs would not provide us with principles of justice that could be easily

formulated through the medium of a natural language, but they could tell us what

justice requires us to do in response to different circumstances and different levels

of need. But suppose that features other than degree of responsibility and level of

need also affect the strength of the reason we have to help someone in need, for

example, whether they want to be helped, or whether their social circumstances are

such that even though they are responsible for their plight we could not reasonably

have expected them to behave otherwise. There may be a number of disablers or

attenuators that affect the presence or strength of the justice reasons we have for

helping those in need. When resources are limited, the strength of our justice

reasons for benefiting an individual or group will also depend to some extent on how

many others we could benefit if we decided to aid others instead. In theory, there is

no reason why we couldn’t plot a variety of different graphs which displayed the

effect of these disablers and attenuators on our reasons for benefiting those in need,

for different levels of need, and different numbers of recipients, but we might begin

to wonder what the point would be of doing so. After all, in plotting the graphs we

will be merely asking a range of contextual questions about the strength of the

justice reasons to benefit the needy in different circumstances, with different

numbers of recipients, at different levels of need. It is not clear that the graphs really

help us to judge; they may merely summarise the judgements we have already

made.

Do We Need Principles of Justice?

The deeply holistic character of justice reasons does not show that particularism is

true. Those who deny particularism by arguing that the possibility of moral thought

depends on the existence of moral principles, are committed to the view that there

must be at least some invariant moral reasons which are not therefore holistic in

character, but they do not have to suppose that all reasons are, or must be, non-

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holistic. However, the deep holism that we have found in examining justice reasons

not only raises some doubts about the value of striving to identify moral principles,

but it also seems more easily explained by particularism. If the possibility of moral

thought does not depend upon the existence of fully specifiable principles, there is

no reason to expect there to be such principles, and indeed it would be purely

accidental were they to exist. In the absence of fully specifiable principles, reasons

will be deeply holistic in character. In this way deep holism provides some indirect

support for particularism.16

But to say that deep holism is more easily explained by particularism, and that it

provides some indirect support for it, is not the same as saying that it is betterexplained by particularism. For that claim is vulnerable to more abstract arguments

which purport to show that if, say, theorising about justice is to be a genuine

exercise in rationality, there must be a sub-category of justice reasons—let us call

them fundamental or ultimate reasons—that do not have a holistic character and

which because they are invariant permit the formulation of principles of justice even

if we cannot readily identify them.17 I do not aim to resolve the question of whether

there must be ultimate justice reasons. In what follows I merely explore the

implications that moral particularism would have for theorising about justice if it

were true and if (as I have claimed) a range of justice reasons have a deeply holistic

character. Would it imply that we should simply abandon the pursuit of principles of

justice? If we were to abandon the pursuit of these principles, at least at a

fundamental level, what scope would be left for theorising about justice?

If moral particularism is true, we have no reason to expect the concept of justice

to be accurately captured by a set of principles that are fully specifiable. This would

raise more serious doubts about the value of trying to formulate such principles than

does the holistic character of ordinary justice reasons taken on its own, since if

moral particularism were true, it would be purely accidental if it turned out that the

concept was capturable in this way. But at a practical level, we still have a need for

principles when we design constitutions and for the purposes of devising legislation

16 Particularists sometimes suppose that the connection between holism and particularism is stronger

than this, even to the point of maintaining that holism entails particularism. For the reason I give it is hard

to see how that claim could be justified. McKeever and Ridge contend that ‘holism provides no positive

support for particularism’ (McKeever and Ridge 2006, p. 26), but that claim is too strong if my argument

that holism provides some indirect support for it is correct.17 Arguing against moral particularism in this way, Roger Crisp introduces the idea of a full justification

of an action that includes everything relevant to its justification, by analogy with the idea of a full

explanation of an event that includes everything relevant to its explanation (Crisp 2000, esp. pp. 34–40;

Crisp 2007, p. 46. See also Hooker 2000, p. 14; Raz 2000, esp. pp. 67–70; Vayrynen 2006). Crisp argues

that if we are to give a full justification of an action we need to appeal to an ‘ultimate reason’ which gives

a complete account of all that is relevant to its justification, and does not depend for its normative force on

any higher order reasons. Such a reason in effect guarantees that there is something to be said in favour of

that action. Although non-ultimate reasons may be holistic in character, ultimate reasons cannot be; a

reason would not be ultimate if it did have a holistic character, for then it could not guarantee that there

really is something to be said in favour of the action. For a plausible response to Crisp, see Dancy (2004,

pp. 47–49; 2007, pp. 87–88).


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and policy—and arguably this need is more pressing than any need there might be

for moral principles to guide individual action within the framework that is defined

by law and policy.18 At this level, however, what we need are manageable principles

which give due weight to justice, and indeed other values, in a wide range of

ordinary circumstances; we do not need principles which fully and accurately codify

what justice and these other values require. In other words, a principle might be

fully adequate—fit for its purpose—without being fully accurate. In that case we

would have to face up to the possibility that general laws and policies which are

devised in the light of these rough and ready principles may inevitably permit or

require a degree of injustice (and not only because justice may need to be balanced

against other values). In relation to a particular issue it may be the case that

whatever general law is enacted, it will inevitably permit or require forms of

behaviour which in some circumstances are deeply unjust. Indeed individuals may

end up being punished for acting in a way which violates a law when if that law did

not exist they would be acting in a way that was not merely permitted by justice but

required by it.19 (In some of these cases we may even want to say that they are being

unjustly punished, even though there is no general law which could be formulated

that would sanction only just punishment). The idea that justice has primacy, in the

demanding sense that we always have an overwhelming reason to reform unjust

laws and policies, will require some qualification even under ideal conditions, for

the fact that a law or policy permits or requires some degree of injustice may not

necessarily provide any reason, not even a pro tanto one, for changing it. Given the

need for general rules, such laws may be the best possible embodiment of justice,

even in ideal circumstances, and even taking into account the impact of other values

upon the formulation of these rules. (Moral generalists too might defend laws which

permit or require injustice because the costs and difficulties attached to enacting and

then enforcing more complex laws that accurately reflect the principles that capture

what is required or permitted by justice are too great, but in that case the grounds on

which they defend these laws are different, at least in part, from those to which the

moral particularist appeals).

In order to fulfil the role for which they are needed, the required principles must

enable us to identify and promote laws, policies, institutions, and actions that give

due weight to what justice requires in a sufficiently large range of standard cases.

Arguably this entails that these principles must be clear and precise enough for their

application, including their application to individual behaviour, to be publicly

checkable even if they are not a fully accurate codification of what justice

18 McKeever and Ridge offer a number of reasons for thinking that principles have an important role to

play in guiding the actions of individuals. See McKeever and Ridge (2006, Chap. 9). But the case for

saying that we need principles of justice to govern the design of constitutions and the formulation of law

and policy is of a different and more urgent kind.19 Of course this may be true even if moral particularism is false. Even someone who rejects moral

particularism can allow that there may be value in encoding rough general moral principles that are

strictly speaking false. For example, it might be argued that there is value in a law which prohibits

euthanasia in all cases, although voluntary and even non-voluntary euthanasia are morally permissible or

even morally required in some cases in a way that could be captured by a suitably complex moral

principle, on the grounds that allowing euthanasia in these cases is likely to lead to some unjust killings

that would not otherwise occur.

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123

requires.20 The possibility of others being able to check the application of these

principles to individual behaviour is important because it promotes justice itself.

First, a person may be willing to act justly only if they have the assurance that others

will do so as well, and sometimes they can have that assurance only if they know

that the behaviour of others can be checked to see whether it complies with what

justice requires. Second, when the application of rules cannot be publicly checked, it

may be possible for individuals to benefit from unjust acts without any chance of

being found out.

Publicly checkable rules also contribute to stability. When the application of

principles can be checked by others, and justice can be seen to be done, one

potential source of conflict and mistrust is removed, making social institutions more

effective, stable and enduring, and thereby helping individuals to make plans and

pursue their own conceptions of the good. Likewise, the transparency involved

when the application of principles is publicly checkable promotes impartiality.

Without the possibility of public checks, there will be too much scope for non-

rational factors to influence judgements, thereby undermining the impartiality of

these judgements. (Rawls’s rejection of what he calls intuitionism, which requires

different principles of justice to be balanced against each other with no priority rules

to determine which should take precedence, seems to rest at least in part on this

thought).

These arguments for the importance of publicly checkable principles suggest that

there is great value in formulating clear and precise rules which give due weight to

what justice requires in most ordinary circumstances, but they do not entail that we

need principles that fully capture what justice requires in all circumstances. Even a

moral generalist can concede this point, however. Indeed we might wonder whether

anyone has ever supposed otherwise. Rawls, for example, is clear that he is devising

principles of justice to govern the basic structure of liberal democratic societies. He

need not, and does not, claim that they are a fully accurate codification of what

justice requires in all societies, at all times and places. Even in relation to liberal

democratic societies, he can say that the principles he is defending are not a fully

accurate codification of what justice requires but merely a good approximation,

sufficient for the practical task of regulating the major institutions of a society

marked by pluralism but embodying a conception of citizens as free and equal.

Although this response is open to defenders of Rawls, there is no explicit indication

that this is how he saw the matter, and it is not the way in which critics have usually

understood his theory. For example, critics of the difference principle have

sometimes claimed that it is inadequate because it gives too much weight to the

interests of the worst off group, and their criticism is made in a way that suggests

they would not be happy with the response that this principle is simply a practical

approximation of how much priority justice requires us to give to the worst off in

ordinary circumstances (see, e.g., Nagel 1991, Chap. 7).

A generalist might claim that what we need here is a distinction between

fundamental principles of justice—the fully specifiable principles, with all the

20 For relevant discussion of the importance of publicity, see Williams (1998). For a critique of the

significance that Williams attaches to publicity, see Cohen (2008, Chap. 8).


123

exceptions clauses required to capture the complexity of the concept—and

principles of regulation, which are required to govern the basic structure of society

(Cohen 2003, pp. 243–245; 2008, pp. 253–254, 274–279). But of course the

particularist denies that we have any reason to think that there are fundamental

principles of justice that accurately codify what it requires, and questions whether

there is any point in striving to find them. If we were to abandon the pursuit of

fundamental principles, could we still make sense of the idea of a highly abstract

kind of philosophical theorising about justice that brackets issues concerning what is

feasible, and which might be contrasted with some less abstract kind of theorising

that starts from judgements about what is possible given our historical circum-

stances and constraints on institutional design? In the absence of fundamental

principles, it seems we would be confronted with a variety of different reasons

which are disabled, enabled, intensified, and attenuated by a variety of different

considerations that may arise in a given context. It might seem that at best political

theorists and philosophers would be left with the following modes of theorising:

first, determining what counts as just or unjust in particular circumstances (whether

real or imagined), by identifying the relevant reasons and how these are disabled,

enabled, intensified or attenuated by other reasons or considerations,21 second,

constructing adequate principles of regulation for a particular society in the light of

what is feasible, giving due weight to what justice requires or permits, and due

weight to the importance of other values such as stability and publicity; third,

identifying discrepancies between what justice requires or permits in particular

circumstances and what the best available principles of regulation in that society

dictate or allow, and reflecting upon the moral significance of these discrepancies.

It is not clear, however, that this exhausts the possible forms of theorising about

justice if particularism is true. We could still make sense of a mode of analysis

which bracketed issues concerning feasibility and took no account of what weight or

significance should be given to other evaluative considerations, such as those which

arise from a concern with stability or publicity.22 This kind of theorising would

identify justice reasons for law, policy or institutional design in the absence of

determining whether these laws, policies, or institutions are feasible, and without

considering the effect of other evaluative considerations upon them. Of course,

these justice reasons might then be disabled or attenuated (or even intensified) when

we moved on to consider what we ought to do under present circumstances, taking

into account what is possible and giving due weight and significance to other values.

But justice theorising which bracketed issues of feasibility and evaluative

considerations that are independent of justice could nevertheless be valuable and

important, since it could draw attention to justice reasons which we might otherwise

21 This activity would require us to seek coherence between the different particular judgements we make

about what is just or unjust but would have no place for a version of reflective equilibrium which required

us to achieve consistency between principles and considered judgements.22 In other words a particularist could endorse what Adam Swift calls an epistemological rather than a

practical conception of the role of political philosophy: see Swift (2008). G. A. Cohen endorses such a

conception when he maintains that ‘the question for political philosophy is not what we should do but

what we should think, even when what we should think makes no practical difference’ (Cohen 2003, p.

243; 2008, p. 268; see also Mason 2004, p. 265; Estlund 2007, p. 269).

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miss which could come to have practical significance as a result of changes in

historical circumstance (which may make laws or policies possible or less costly in

practice than they were before), or indeed changes in technology (which may make

possible the design of different institutions).

Conclusion

Within moral theory the key debate over particularism concerns whether there must

be ultimate moral reasons that do not possess a holistic character, which would

permit the formulation of moral principles. Without seeking to resolve that debate, I

have tried to show that a number of ordinary justice reasons have a deeply holistic

character, and that even if it is possible to formulate fully accurate principles of

justice, the value of striving to do so is open to question. I have also explored the

implications that moral particularism would have for theorising about justice. I have

argued that even if there are no fully accurate principles of justice that would

provide us with ultimate justice reasons, we would nevertheless require principles of

justice to regulate policy and institutions, and that these would need to be

reasonably clear and precise in order to allow their application to be publicly

checked. But we can distinguish between the activity of constructing these

principles and the activity of theorising about what justice, accurately conceived,

requires in particular circumstances; and even if moral particularism is correct, we

would still be entitled to engage in a more abstract form of reasoning about what

justice would require in the absence of various feasibility constraints and costs of

implementation.

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Chris Armstrong, Roger Crisp, Jonathan Dancy, David

Owen, participants in the Graduate Political Theory seminar at the University of Warwick (especially

Matthew Clayton, Andrew Williams, Victor Tadros, and Ed Page), and the journal’s referees, for their

helpful comments.

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