Whose Justice? Which Rationality? - Alasdair McIntyre (In-depth book summary) - Chapter 2 - “Justice and Action in the Homeric Imagination”

This is chapter 1 of an in-depth summary of this book. For previous chapters or parts, look into the blog page. My objective is to avoid being overly technical and make clearer what incredible thinkers, such as this one, have communicated through their books.

All the quotes or pages are from the following edition:

Alasdair MacIntyre: Whose justice? Which rationality?, London: Duckworth, 2001.

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MacIntyre starts his chapter by pointing out John Anderson’s interpretation of Heraclitus’ thesis: “Justice is conflict and that everything comes to pass in accordance with conflict.” But according to Anderson’s understanding, the same conflict can be seen in “the nature of social institutions and social orders.” However this type of conflict is one that does not result in disintegration but rather a vehicle for integration and stability.

WHAT IS A “TRADITION” IN THE CONTEXT OF CONFLICT?

A tradition is an argument extended through time in which certain fundamental agreements are defined and redefined in terms of two kinds of conflict

1. First conflict: external

   The external conflict comes with people who reject all or part of the basic reasons at the basis of such tradition.

2. Second conflict internal

   This when there are disputes or an attempt to abolish the basis of “common fundamental agreement. This brings about divisions within a tradition and in some cases it implies its own destruction. At times, there can be two antagonistic traditions that are encapsulated by a larger unity and therefore seen as one tradition with internal complexity in their debates.

This understanding of what “tradition” means is vital to understanding MacIntyre’s thesis. Because that entails that any dialogue or criticism towards any tradition must come with a grasp of its conflicts (external and internal).

This means that trying to make sense of the “conflicts of the social and cultural order of the Athenian polis” would require to hear the influence of “the body of oral and written matter were the Iliad and the Odyssey.

WHAT IS OUR STARTING POINT TO MAKE SENSE OF ANY TRADITION

That beginning requires the discovery of some way to express to ourselves in English prose what has to be learned from a poet speaking a Homeric Greek in which, happily or unhappily, many of our own present-day thoughts about justice and practical rationality could not even be expressed. (13)

This is vital to keep in mind since in the rest of the chapter McIntyre will elucidate the different implications of the moral vocabulary in the Homeric poems and the difficulty of our filters and language when grasping the main sense of these ancient words.

DIKE, THEMIS AND JUSTICE

The use of the word “dike”, both by Homer and by those whom he portrayed, presupposed that the universe had a single fundamental order, and order structuring both nature and society, so that the distinction which we mark by contrasting the natural and the social cannot as yet be expressed. To be dikaios is to conduct one’s actions and affairs in accordance with this order (14).

This means that there is an order as an essential part of the structure or reality or the cosmos. In this order Zeus is the one who is sovereign and everything goes back to him.

According to this framework, a person is just if they express the justice “Zeus” has decreed. Another important thing to notice is that “of the uses of dike in the Iliad all refer either to a judgment by a judge in a dispute or to a claim by a participant in a dispute. A particular dike is straight if it accords with what themis requires, crooked if it departs from it. Themis is what is ordained, what is laid down as the ordering of things and people.” (14)

Put simply, someone is abiding by dike if “he judges in accordance with the themistes [leyes o normas], the ordinances given by Zeus.” (14)

This helps us understand that when someone blames another of lacking dike, o de “no ser justo”, that implies that one is failing to act according to the themis, to what is the cosmic order where Zeus is the sovereign.

ROLES WITHIN THE COSMIC ORDER

The order over which Zeus and human kings reign is one structured in terms of hierarchically ordered social rules. To know what is required of you is to know what your place is within that structure and to do what your role requires. (14)

AGATHOS, ARETE, TIME

When someone fulfills their role within this cosmic order, that person is considered “good” or agathos. When a person is good at fulfilling their role, there is another element: their excellence or virtue.

However, “one who does what it is proper for a king to do, preserving his time [honor] as a king, may nonetheless act in a way not well designed to preserve dike. Agamemnon in dishonoring Achilles did not cease to be agathos (Iliad I, 275).” (15).

PRACTICAL RATIONALITY IN THE HOMERIC POEMS

Something important to understand is that in Homer there aren’t psychological categories, even though, translations might make us believe so. It would be more appropriate to speak of physiology (18). This makes sense if one keeps in mind that the word thumos (soul or spirit) is defined as that vital energy . That is why passions such as anger or lust swell the thumos, leading ourselves to an action which can often be destructive (16).

This is the part in which the “means-ends reasoning” is different to the way it is used in later times. All practical reasoning starts with the question “what am I to do?”, but in the Homeric poems, the subject asking this question already knows what action to take. What then is a Homeric-like subject asking when making that question:

1. “either a reminder that he must curb his thumos if he is to perform it or else must suffer baneful consequences (for example, not have the gods hear his prayers).” (19)

2. “…or a conclusion that he or she is to do what is required (as, for example, Odysseus reasons that he must have the bow if he is to kill the suitors, and Penelope that she must unravel her weaving if she is to fend suitors off).” (19)

LATER THEORISTS OF PRACTICAL REASONING

1. From the “good” to an action: “In some ancient and medieval accounts the agent reasons from premises about what the good for agents of his or her kind is, conjoined with premises about his or her situation, to conclusions which are actions.” (20)

2. From “wants” to action: “In some modern account the agent reasons from premises about what he or she wants, conjoined with premises about how what he or she wants is to be obtained, to conclusions which are decisions or intentions to act in a particular way.” (20)

3. From desire to a calculated action: “In some early modern accounts the agent, motivated to satisfy some desire, selects according to some rational criterion an action as a means to the satisfaction of that desire.” (20)

In these cases, it is not obvious what the agent must do. The agent actually comes to realize what they need to do based on this “means-ends reasoning”.

A warning MacIntyre gives is in reference with the conception of “desires” as a psychological basic item “invariant in their function between cultures” (21).

It is not always the case that a person acts or behaves in such a way because of a desire or passion.

Whether it is so or not will depend in important part of the way in which in the relevant culture the relationship between the inner world of purposes, felt needs, pains, pleasures, emotions, desires, and the like and the public social world of actions, claims, excuses, pleas, duties, and obligations are organized (21).

SHARED SCHEMA IN EVERY CULTURE

Central to every culture is a shared schema of greater or lesser complexity by means of which each agent is able to render the actions of others intelligible so that he or she knows how to respond to them . This schema is not necessarily ever explicitly articulated by agents themselves, and even when it is articulated, they may make mistakes and misunderstand what it is that they do in understanding others. (22)

This “shared schema” can be seen in the Homeric poems: dike (justice) and arete (virtue or excellence) in the context of thumos (spirit, soul or passions as vital energy), offer an understanding of what actions mean and what kinds of actions one needs to perform. Therefore, an action is properly understood, in this case, against the backdrop of the cosmic order of dike. And, even the transgressions cannot be interpreted as such if it were not for the same order or “signs of the same order” (23).

Understanding the coherence on the shared schema in a specific culture aids us in seeing two things:

1. The inseparable connection between justice and practical rationality. We cannot speak of what is “just” without implying or exhibiting a very specific understanding of “practical rationality”.

2. What things are considered “virtues”. When somebody says “justice is X”, and “justice” points out to a certain kind of behaviour or action (for example, not saying the wrong thing at the wrong time), is at the same time indicating the virtue (prudence) of such person. So that, among many other virtues, will make up a conception of human good.

It is not just that the conception of dike and that of practical reasoning are interrelated; neither can be understood adequately apart from quite a number of other concepts (23).

A PHENOMENOLOGY OF PRACTICAL REASONING

MacIntyre states that practical reasoning becomes relevant when “the structure of normality” is insufficient as a guide for action. Let’s reflect on this idea.

All practical reasoning arises from someone’s asking the question “What am I to do?” The asking of that question itself has point only when some reason has presented itself to the agent, or has been presented to him or her, for doing something other than that which he or she would in the normal way of things have next or at least quite soon proceeded to do (24)

The structure of normality provides the most basic framework for understanding action. Acting in accordance with those structures does not require the giving or the having of reasons for acting, except in certain exceptional types of circumstance in which those structures have been put in question (25)

So acting upon certain specific reasons is usually exceptional and in normal circumstances is intelligible only in terms of and against the background of the structures of normality. It is departing from what those structures prescribe which requires the having and giving of reasons…But this does not mean that the structures of normality may not themselves be understood, independently of and prior to any reasoning, as worthy of respect; and when they are so understood, it is commonly because the structures of normal life are taken to be a local expression of the order of the cosmos (25).

This structure of normality was to the Athenians the Homeric poems and the understanding of the dike as a synonym of the cosmic order of things. That was the backdrop against people in fifth- and fourth-century Athens thought the new emerging questions.