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JusticeandthePostmodernProblematic
JusticeandthePostmodernProblematic
byStephenK.White
Source:
PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3+4/1987,pages:306319,onwww.ceeol.com.
JUSTICE AND THE POSTMODERN PROBLEMATIC
Stephen K. White
It is becoming increasingly commonplace to hear that the conditions of
modern life are being superseded or undermined in significant ways. The
sources of this change and the character of the effect it is having are subjects of
dispute, as are the labels which are chosen to specify this complex
phenomenon. Some prefer the notion of a "post-industrial society," others
that of an "informational mode of production;" still others speak in a broader
sense of a "postmodern condition."l
What I want to investigate here is how this complex phenomenon ought to
influence the way one thinks about justice. In order to make headway on this
specific question, is first necessary to broach the general one as to which are
the most significant changes modernity is undergoing.
The term "postmodern" has been most often associated with aesthetics and
epistemology whereas the term "post-industrial" has been most often associ-
ated with changes in technology and society. I will be using the term
"postmodern" as a rubric under which to group all of these types of
phenomena. Making plausible the claim that we are living in a distinctively
new, postmodern society is an immense task which I will not take on here.
Rather, I will be suggesting simply that the phenomena I specify together
constitute a postmodern problematic: new challenges, dilemmas and
opportllnities. If this claim is plausible, then the problems I will discuss in
regard to justice are ones which need to be taken seriously. The postmodern
problematic is constituted by four phenomena: the increasing unper-
suasiveness of metanarratives, the rise of new informational technologies, the
growing awareness of new problems associated with societal rationalization,
and the emergence of new social movements.
2
(I) The Postmodern Problematic
(A) Jean-Francois Lyotard sees the hallmark of postmodernism as an
"incredulity toward metanarratives."3 By metanarratives, Lyotard means
those basic interpretive schemes which have constituted the ultimate and
unquestioned sources for the justification of scientific and political projects in
the modern world. Incredulity toward metanarratives is a theme shared by a
host of contemporary "post-metaphysical" thinkers.
4
But incredulity is not
the only thing at issue here. Just as importantly, there is the general sense that
our Western metanarratives, because of their universalistic claims, have
carried with them a pernicious cultural imperialism.
s
As these philosophical
anchors of our moral-political traditions increasingly give way, we are faced
with the task of articulating distinctively different justifications for values we
continue to embrace.
Praxis International 7:3/4 Winter 1987/8 0260-8448 $2.00
Praxis International 307
(B) A second element of the postmodern problematic is the rise of new
informational technologies, by which I mean all forms of media, beginning
especially with television, that vastly enhance the circulation of images and
information. What makes these technologies problematic is their political
ambivalence.
6
On the one hand, they are often seen as instruments for
empowering individuals, a view clearly evident in the IBM television commer-
cial that shows a Charlie Chaplin look-alike bringing his life into order with
the help of a personal computer. The message, of course, is that because of
new informational technology postmodern times will be better than modern
times. A parallel view holds that the decentralizing potential of some of the
newest technology can also enhance the prospects of radically democratizing
political life.
7
On the other hand, informational technology is just as often
seen as the instrument of an emerging Big Brother or a potent new ideological
apparatus of corporate capitalism. What these opposing views have in
common is an agreement on the power of such technologies to structure the
consciousness and self-identity of individuals and groups. What they disagree
about is the question of who will likely control these technologies and what
purposes they will serve. The dispute thus expresses a postmodern variant of
the traditional problem of power and freedom.
(C) I identified the third element of the postmodern problematic as a
growing awareness of new problems associated with societal rationalization.
What I mean by this is that social theorists are increasingly reestimating the
costs of Western modernization in an upward direction. Prominent among
such reevaluations are Foucault's analysis of the process of "normalization,"
Habermas' of "the colonization of the lifeworld," and Lyotard's of the logic of
"performativity."g Such reevaluations draw attention to (among other things)
problems associated with the growth of the welfare activities of the modern
state. They recognize that, however benevolent these activities may be in
intention, the discourses and institutions which emerge with them often
promote a progressive disempowerment of their clients. For theorists of the
left this insight signals a need for radical self-reexamination. It must be
emphasized, however, that such an insight is not equivalent to the standard
conservative warnings about the evils of modern state power. It is different
because it is coupled with a recognition that the discourses and institutions of
corporate capitalism in an informational age also participate in a logic of
disempowerment. And it is only this dual concern which characterizes the
recognition of a postmodern problematic.
(D) The fourth phenomenon I want to consider is the appearance of new
values and "new social movements" in Western, industrialized societies.
9
Social scientists have for some time been calling attention to the emergence of
"post-materialist values" and new sorts of groups, for whom politics is not in
the first instance a matter of compensations that the corporate economy
or welfare state can provide. Rather the question is how to defend or reinstate
endangered ways of life, or how to put reformed ways of life into practice. In
short, the new conflicts are not sparked by problems of distribution, but concern
the grammar of forms of life. IQ
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308 Praxis International
The women's movement, the peace movement, radical ecologists, gays,
religious fundamentalists, and countercultural groups in general all share, at
least to some degree, this new status, even if they differ in many substantive
ways. They all have a somewhat defensive character as well as a focus on
struggling for the ability to socially construct their own collective identity,
characteristics which make them rather anomalous in relation to the standard
rules for interest group behaviour in tIle modern state. On the other hand,
though, they are just as anomalous for Marxian-influenced theories of the left
which continually seek the social embodiment of a revolutionary subjectivity
that will speak and act in the name of all disaffected groups. What stands out
about new social movements is an irreducible pluralism and suspicion of
totalistic revolutionary programs.
The status and qualities of such new social movements have been paid
increasing attention by philosophers and social theorists who hope for a future
where both the "normalizing" processes of the corporate capitalist, welfare
state system and the repressive closures of revolutionary systems are actively
resisted. These theorists celebrate the emergence of "local" resistance
(Foucault), "border conflict" (Habermas), "local determinism" (Lyotard),
and particularistic "lines of flight" (Deleuze) from the societal or revolu-
tionary rationalization of life. 11
(11) The New Pluralist Justice
In what follows I will show how some recent thinking about justice orients
itself to one or more of the components of the postmodern problematic. As the
discussion proceeds, I will be claiming that an adequate conceptualization of
justice ought to take into account all of these components and do so in a way
which also articulates our most reflective moral judgments at least as well as
the best of more traditional theories of justice. In this section, I will begin with
the way recent thinking about justice has responded to the death of
metanarratives.
Traditional theories of justice are ones tied to some sort of metanarrative
that anchors them philosophically and gives them a claim to universal validity.
For present purposes, the most important of these are the liberal and Marxian
perspectives. The former grounds justice in quasi-Kantian assumptions about
individuals and goods while the latter grounds it in assumptions about history
and emancipation. Two recent attempts to rethink justice without either of
these foundational crutches are Michael Walzer's Spheres of Justice and
Jean-Francois Lyotard's Just Gaming.
12
Both Lyotard and Walzer react against the totalizing effect of metanarra-
tives of justice; that is, the subordination of plurality and heterogeneity to
unity and homogeneity under the regime of some universal principles of
justice. Both seek a new account of pluralism which shows the illegitimacy of
such a position. What makes this a new account is, first, that it does not attach
its claims directly to individuals and the sovereign choice of their own gods or
goods; rather pluralism is seen as having an irreducible social or intersubjec-
tive dimension. Gods or goods only have a coherent meaning and validity
Praxis International 309
within an intersubjectively shared language game. Second, this new pluralism
emphasizes that a crucial part of doing justice is "listening"-moving away
from the fixation with authoring new principles and toward procedures
attuned to recognizing the "boundaries" of a heterogeneous world.
I3
In this
sense, Walzer and Lyotard are both strongly committed to developing a
notion of justice which is more open to otherness. Here the contrast with
traditional views of justice can be described as one between approaches which
are primarily attuned to a sense of responsibility to otherness versus ones attuned
to a responsibility to act, or, more specifically in this case, a responsibility to
author determinate and unambiguous principles for judgment and action. 14
Walzer has done more than anyone else to establish the internal coherence
of the new pluralist view of justice. I will argue, however, that one must go
beyond Walzer in two ways. First, he fails to contextualize this new view
adequately in the present historical situation; that is, in relation to other
dimensions of the postmodern problematic. Lyotard and others are more
illuminating in this regard (although they have not developed their ideas about
justice nearly as well as Walzer). Second, where Walzer does engage the
postmodern problematic-the death of metanarratives-he leaves one with
some concern about how his views resonate with our most reflective moral
judgments.
(Ill) Otherness and the Other Dimensions of the Postmodern Problematic
In Walzer, the emphasis on listening, boundaries and otherness at least
partially reflects a general concern about Western cultural imperialism. This is
evident in his frequent use of non-Western and pre-modern anthropological
sources. IS Even more explicitly, however, Walzer draws justification from the
way his approach provides defenses against totalitarianism. A totalitarian
society is the polar opposite of a society respecting boundaries between
different spheres of life.
I6
Walzer is no doubt right about this in a general
sense, but the question I want to raise is whether invoking the spectre of the
classical totalitarian party-state adequately illuminates the character of exis-
ting threats to achieving more justice in Western societies. Here the
postmodern thinkers are providing better insight. Totalitarianism and
Western cultural imperialism are of course seen by them as dangers; but at the
same time they are attempting to grasp social and political phenomena which
are not adequately comprehended by these concepts. They are concerned with
a systemic, rationalizing process, the effects of which threaten precisely the
kind of values Walzer wants to see protected.
In a general sense, reference to some such process goes back to Marx.
However, theorists attuned to the postmodern problematic depart sharply, as
I have said, from Marx's totalistic revolutionary program and his failure to see
a threat of disempowerment in the political sphere as well as the economic.
These theorists are closer to Weber in their appreciation of the paradoxical
qualities of modern life and in their lack of programatic optimism.
But postmodern reflection also departs from Weber in significant ways.
Two of these are particularly important in the present context. An illumi-
310 Praxis International
nation of these contrasts will help locate ways in which postmodern reflection
on justice needs to go beyond Walzer.
CA) The first is most evident in the work of Foucault. His analysis of the
normalizing logic of modern life looks beyond Weber's concern for the
individual subject's freedom in a world increasingly dominated by rational-
legal authority; it goes further and finds that our conceptions of subjectivity
are themselves already deeply structured by processes of power. And these
processes are inextricably related to the generation of knowledge in the human
sciences, as Foucault's analyses of punishment and sexuality have shown.
17
What this means is that the logic of societal rationalization in modern life
penetrates the consciousness of individuals more deeply than Weber imag-
ined, and that the growing informationalization of society is only likely to
make this problem more acute. We are bathed in an increasing volume of
information which is continually coded and recoded to meet the interests of
corporate capitalism and public administration; and in this process our
traditions, expectations and consciousness of who we are are deeply structured.
An adequate sense of the postmodern problematic does not mean that one
sees societal rationalization and informationalization in a one-sidedly negative
light. Although Foucault sometimes seems to lean this way, others such as
Lyotard and Habermas are more explicit about the ambivalence of these
complex phenomena. They have the potential for empowerment as well as for
disempowerment. And the problem for critical political reflection is to analyze
the conditions under which the former is more consistently fostered.
If these theorists are correct, this has distinct implications for the new
pluralist approach to justice, for societal rationalization in an age of inform-
ationalization threatens otherness and the autonomy of different spheres of
meaning in new and sublte ways. It does so because the dominant discourses
and institutions which carry that rationalization process forward so structure
public meanings that alternative discourses find critical footholds difficult to
secure.
18
What this means is that openness to the continual emergence of
otherness is under a systematic threat which Walzer does not bring into the
foreground of his reflections on justice.
One of the real strengths of Foucault's mode of analysis as one initial source
of insight into questions of justice is that it makes far more phenomena in an
informationalizing society appear to be power phenomena than do traditional
approaches. His persistent use of metaphors of warfare promotes a kind of
hypersensitivity to problems of power. Now, no plausible approach to justice
can be oriented solely around such hypersensitivity; but, for an approach
which takes seriously all dimensions of the postmodern problematic, this kind
of initial orientation is appropriate. The reason for this is that justice is
concerned with claims in conflict. But if the conflict is deeply latent or merely
potential, then no one is actually staking a claim. Otherness trails off into
voicelessness.
Here even a model like Habermas' communicative one, with its particular
sensitivity to power arrangements, is not sensitive enough, because it
presupposes speaking participants in its ideal speech situation. Now of course
few people are literally speechless, but that is not the point; rather the point is
Praxis International 311
having available a language game in which certain potentialities of perception
and identity can find coherent expression. The theorist cannot literally bring
such a language game into existence; however, the employment of Foucaul-
dian metaphors, with their presumption of contending claimants, at least
focuses attention toward sites where the voice of otherness might emerge.
CB) A second way in which postmodern reflection on rationalization and
informationalization differs from Weber relates to the topic of legitimation
and authority. Weber's logic of rationalization involves rational-legal
authority increasingly displacing traditional and charismatic authority.19 In
framing the problem this way, Weber establishes the parameters of a social
world in which otherness will increasingly be cornered in shrinking spheres of
localized traditional life or burst out in charismatic movements.
From this perspective, if one tries to interpret the phenomena of "post-
material values" and "new social movements," one is bound to see them as
some sort of manifestation of charisma. For postmodern theorists, however,
such an interpretation is not very insightfuL19a Foucault, Habermas and
Lyotard each find in such movements normative qualities which are missed by
the Weberian perspective. This is not to say, however, that any of these
thinkers sees new social movements as somehow embodying a world-historical
revolutionary subjectivity. Rather, these movements, like the processes of
rationalization and informationalization in the context of which they are
emerging, have an ambiguous character. And the work of Habermas,
Foucault and Lyotard can be seen, at least partially, as helping to give more
coherence to those normative qualities which are resistant to the logic of
rationalization.
20
Foucault, of course, was extraordinarily wary of any such search for
normative coherence. Although he was aware of the necessity of it, his work
always gravitated instead to reemphasizing the dangers to otherness implicit in
such a task and to reflecting on how otherness could express itself.
21
Lyotard
and Habermas, however, are convinced that the task has to be taken up more
explicitly.
In doing so, they distinguish themselves sharply from the Weberian
perspective. Both attempt to elucidate something like a post-traditional,
rational basis of legitimacy which is not reducible to any of Weber's
alternatives.
22
Such a normative construction would have two components
relevant to justice. First, it would focus attention on the ways in which an
informationalizing society undercuts potential conceptual footholds for
counter-discourses. Secondly, it would offer some account of constraints on
otherness or plurality. Without such an account, postmodern political
reflection ends up generating only guidelines and speculation about "strategies
for survival" in contemporary life, with each strategy released from any
normative responsibility to the others.
23
The real problem, as Lyotard puts it,
is to develop a normative perspective "that would respect both the desire for
justice and the desire for the unknown"; or, as I put it earlier, that would
respect both the responsibility to act in a normatively justifiable way as well as
the responsibility to otherness.
24
I will look briefly now at the first component
and more extensively at the second in the next section.
312 Praxis International
In relation to informationalizing society and the space for counter-
discourses, it is useful to turn again to Walzer for some initial bearings. When
he speaks of spheres of justice, he is primarily concerned with elaborating the
internal coherence of existing spheres and warning against allowing the
meanings constituted within one sphere to be dominated by meanings
appropriate to another sphere. But how does this relate to the problem of
protecting the potential for new spheres of meaning?
Walzer, of course, is astute enough to recognize that sometimes it makes
sense to doubt whether dominant, shared meanings are "really shared." And
he notes parenthetically that where this is suspected or where explicit
controversy over meanings exists, " ... then justice requires that the society
be faithful to the disagreements, providing institutional channels for their
expression, adjudicative mechanisms, and alternative distributions."25 What
is parenthetical in Walzer, though, is shifted into the foreground, once one
confronts the full range of the postmodern problematic. Both Lyotard and
Habermas seek normative orientations that immediately turn our attention to
the investigation of the institutional settings and media arrangements in which
new meanings, identities, and discourses can emerge and maintain them-
selves.
26
Now hardly anyone would deny that contemporary Western societies
generate swarms of new discourses all the time. The problem is how to
develop criteria for discriminating between pre-packaged newness and new-
ness in which one can have at least some confidence of its autonomous
qualities.
Specifying the grounds upon which one can have some confidence in the
relative autonomy of new discourses is a complex matter. No simple blueprint
of communication structures and institutional arrangements will be satisfac-
tory. For one thing, as indicated in my discussion of Foucault, the whole
question of power and freedom in an informationalizing society is one which
must be continually asked in different ways. In addition, the problem of what
it means for emerging discourses to gain some degree of control over, "the
socio-cultural means of interpretation and communication" is rather more
difficult to specify than in the classic case of control over the means of
production. The means of interpretation and communication include
the officially recognized vocabularies in which one can press claims; the idioms
available for interpreting and communicating one's needs; the established
narrative conventions available for constructing the individual and collective
histories which are constitutive of social identity; the paradigm of argumentation
accepted as authoritative in adjudicating conflicting claims; the ways in which
various discourses constitute their respective subject matters as specific sorts of
objects; the repertory of available rhetorical devices; the bodily and gestural
dimensions of speech which are associated in a given society with authority and
conviction. 27
This list gives a good sense of the depth of the problem of arranging the means
of interpretation and communication so that new or submerged discourses can
become empowered rather than disempowered. In the present context,
however, I am not concerned with the prescribing how this task should be
Praxis International 313
carried out. My point is simply to establish the significance of this for a theory
of justice pursued within the postmodern problematic.
(IV) Constraining Pluralism
An approach to justice which both fosters otherness or pluralism, and
reflects and enriches our considered moral judgments is one which authors
and defends certain constraints. Even after one has deconstructively height-
ened sensitivity to the dangers involved in constraining pluralism-seen now
as disciplining otherness-this task remains. A useful way to think about
constraints on new pluralist accounts of justice is to distinguish two levels.
First, there must be some global principle of pluralism. And, second, t11ere
must be some more specific procedural principles which provide normative
guidelines for situations where plural forms of life come into conflict. I will
contrast Walzer's approach to these two levels with that of postmodern
thinkers in order to see if the latter present more adequate arguments. I
consider even modest advances here significant, because this is one of the most
philosophically complex problems facing postmodern normative reflection.
The global principle informing Walzer's approach is one which transforms
his thesis about the distinctiveness of meanings in different spheres into a
claim about the rightness of treating distinctive spheres as autonomous.
28
The
principle itself takes something lik.e the following form: one ought to
recognize and respect the cultural creations of others. 29 It is this which turns
Walzer's conceptual insights about social meanings into a rich normative
vision of complex equality. What is a bit surprising is how little is said about
this principle which apparently is accorded universal validity. The question
here is not, of course, one of demanding some absolute grounds for the
principle, but rather some account of the rationale by which it would have
significance and validity for us.
Lyotard is acutely aware of the difficulty of combining a radical commit-
ment to otherness with a universalistic principle of constraint. His commit-
ment to otherness is expressed in the notion of "paralogism." This term
denotes the logic emphasized by the new philosophy of science. It legitimates
a continual search for new "moves" which challenge the consensus of
dominant paradigms. "In terms of the idea of transparency," paralogism
"generates blind spots and defers consensus."30 Lyotard suggests that this
principle of science might also serve as a model for the justice of society. In
other words paralogism will be the basic principle justifying the openness to
otherness in politics. The proliferation of "small narratives" will both replace
the centripetal force of traditional metanarratives of legitimacy and counter
the logic of "performativity" (the term Lyotard uses for the dominant logic of
societal rationalization). 31
But paralogism must be related somehow to normative constraints. In
science, it is constrained by general criteria of progressiveness, especially
expansion of the explanatory scope of theories and increase in their predictive
power. What plays an analogous role in regard to matters of justice? What, in
short, constrains the plurality endorsed by paralogism? With some reluctance,
314 Praxis International
Lyotard borrows here from Kant, insofar as the latter's morality is regulated
by the "Idea" or "horizon" of "reasonable beings . . . that can exist together
and form a totality." This horizon is not a metaphysical one but rather
"simply a pushing to the limit, the maximization of a concept. And the
concept here is that of freedom, that is, of reason in its practical use."32
Lyotard wants to use this notion of a horizon in relation to maximizing the
concept of diversity or multiplicity. The question now becomes one of
reflecting upon what is just or unjust "against the horizon of a multiplicity or a
diversity" of small narratives, none of which can legitimately sanction the
domination of another. Lyotard thus recommends the following universal
principle: "one must maximize as much as possible the multiplication of small
narratives. "33
Despite the apparent Kantian, juridical flavor of this principle, Lyotard
defends it in terms drawn from classical Greek philosophy. The attempt of
one language game to dominate another is condemned as pleonexia or excess.
But pleonexia had significance in Greek philosophy primarily in relation to a
theory of the virtues, which specified certain substantive ideals of individual
character.
34
When Lyotard uses the concept, however, it is related only to the
formal principle of multiplying small narratives. This produces a shift in
meaning which empties the concept of its traditional sense, but which does
not clearly substitute any other.
Thus, Lyotard, leaves one as perplexed as Walzer does about the normative
force of his general principle for constraining pluralism. Lyotard's efforts do,
however, provide some useful direction. In appealing to the notion of
pleonexia, he is seeking some way of thinking about balance and imbalance in
contemporary life. What I would suggest is that the proper way of articulating
such a notion is not in direct relation to the classical theory of virtue, but
rather in relation to what Habermas has called the one-sided or "imbalanced"
development of the potential of modern culture in the context of societal
rationalization. 35
Habermas argues that what differentiates modern culture is its recognition
of distinctive rationales attaching to scientific-technical, moral-practical and
aesthetic-expressive experience.
36
Societal rationalization or modernization,
however, has been thoroughly dominated by scientific-technical criteria. It is
in terms of the submergence of the moral-practical and
aesthetic-expressive-and their possible reemergence-that Habermas inter-
prets the appearance of post-material values and new social movements.
37
In the present context, the task is to show how reasons for a principle of
constraint on pluralism can be generated by contextualizing it within such a
general interpretation of modernity. Here I will only try to suggest a broad
sketch of how such an account might be put together. The key lies in
considering how aesthetic-expressive concerns might extend moral-practical
or normative ones in such a way that we could see how a principle like
Walzer's or Lyotard's would contribute to a more enriched, less frustrating
way of living in contemporary society, with its dominant pressures of
rationalization. In this sense the appeal would be to the value of a mode of life
making more balanced use of the cultural potential of modernity.
Praxis International 315
When one interprets Walzer's or Lyotard's principles in a strictly normative
or juridical sense, they appear as practical obligations of respect and
toleration, guaranteeing some minimal space to others and their forms of life.
In support of such a principle one might bring to bear some variant of
post-conventional ethics. For a number of reasons I would contend that
communicative ethics offers the most persuasive case in this regard.
38
But that
is not the particular claim that I want to make here. No post-conventional
ethics can alone provide adequate reasons for constrained pluralism. Such an
ethics teaches, following J.S. Mill, that one ought to tolerate diversity
however much that disposition is likely to feel "unnatural." This is a crucial
minimal justification. However, I want to suggest that pluralism in a
postmodern context can perhaps make use of a new sort of reason, born of the
experience of one-sidedness that Habermas and others have been trying to
articulate.
If they are right about the depth of this experience in contemporary life,
then it may be that, against the background of societal rationalization,
diversity may gain a new attractiveness as we seek to enhance the aesthetic-
expressive dimension. This would mean that along with our moral conviction
about the duty of tolerance there might emerge an increasing sense of pleasure
and delight in experiencing diversity. This sense is crucial for the sort of new
pluralism I have been discussing. The reason is that toleration alone is not an
adequate defense of otherness against the subtle processes of advancing
rationalization in an informationalizing society. Newness, or the potential for
otherness, in authentic manifestations, needs not only to be tolerated but
actually fostered. Only normative reasons which are mutually enriched by
aesthetic-expressive ones will be adequate to this task.
39
And only then will a
general principle for constraining pluralism be comprehended in its full sense.
CV) Specific Constraints
Even if a general principle of pluralism can be supported in the way I have
suggested, that still leaves one with the problem of constraint on a more
concrete level. This is the case simply because a general prescription to respect
and foster diversity provides little guidance in specific situations, in which
different spheres or forms of life come into conflict. When such conflict
actually arises, one needs more direction of a specifically normative or
juridical character. In such cases Walzer correctly suggests that justice
"requires that the society be faithful to the disagreements." The question,
however, is how one does this, because being faithful here requires managing
the disagreement from the perspective of some normative standpoint.
Certainly part of this standpoint will follow from the general principle of
constraint; that is, a commitment to pluralism will require that just resol-
utions give some communicative and institutional space to each side. Thus
Walzer speaks of resolving conflicts in ways which provide "alternative
distributions."4o But assertions such as this need to be further developed if
they are to provide the necessary degree of normative direction.
My point can be made as follows. One might envision a spectrum of
316 Praxis International
possibilities for such direction, ranging from determinate, substantive posi-
tions to ones which would look primarily to free, contractual resolution of
disagreements. The new pluralist justice has forsaken the former option; and
the question is how far it goes toward the latter. Walzer really does not
confront this question, although some critics have tried to show that his
position actually implies more normative standards than he admits.
41
Lyotard, on the other hand, explicitly endorses the perspective of free,
flexible, contractual arrangements.
42
Presumably, he thinks that such a
process will, within the horizon of multiplicity, provide the most just way of
managing conflicts, since it operates to maintain maximum freedom for
diverse forms of life. But Lyotard is also a little ambivalent about the
endorsement he gives to contractual arrangements. He suggests rather vaguely
that such arrangements may also contribute to advancing societal rationaliz-
ation by providing a systemically non-distruptive form of conflict resolution.
43
Although Lyotard thus sees reason to be cautious about his own endorsement
of contract, I would contend that the problem with contracts is both more
specific and more serious than he realizes.
When an unqualified endorsement is given to contractual arrangements at
this level of normative analysis, it generates a thorough blindness to the
structural inequalities which are reproduced in processes of societal rationaliz-
ation.
44
The freedom of participants in contractual negotiations (which
presumably is what attracts Lyotard) is always problematic until one has
normatively evaluated the degree of inequality existing between the particip-
ants. Otherwise one blindly endorses even the Hobbesian contract in which
the first party freely agrees to give up his wallet in return for the second party
agreeing not to shoot him.
Lyotard's failure to articulate a normative standpoint which even raises this
problem is a serious shortcoming in his account of justice. The difficulty one
must face is how to keep this problem visible, without at the same time
building into one's standpoint a determinate account of equality that would in
turn exceed the limits of a pluralist perspective. What is necessary is a
perspective which functions analogously to Foucault's analysis of inconspicu-
ous forms of power in informational society. His analysis continually draws
attention to ways in which psychological and social processes may be
disempowering us, but it offers no substantive normative perspective from
which one can decide these issues once and for all.
Communicative ethics could perform a similar function in relation to the
specific problem of "free" agreements in the context of structural inequalities.
Critical theory has often been called a "hermeneutics of suspicion," because it
continually seeks to expose such contexts. But too often critics have suspected
that behind this suspicion there lurks a full blown counter-agenda specifying
the precise shape of the good society. I have tried to show elsewhere that this
is simply an incorrect interpretation of communicative ethics.
45
In the notion
of an ideal speech situation there is certainly a fundamental endorsement of
equality, but it extends only so far as is necessary to provide space for subjects
to reflect critically upon their social and political arrangements.
46
Such an
endorsement of equality thus cannot ever vouchsafe in advance an une-
Praxis International 317
quivocal judgment that the degree of inequality in any given institution is
unjust. And if this is so, then communicative ethics has the characteristics
necessary to address the problem over which Lyotard stumbles.
(VI) Conclusion
Political theorists have recently begun feeling their way toward a new
pluralist account of justice, a task made imperative by the death of those
metanarratives that previously sustained traditional approaches to justice.
This task can take on a clearer character if it is informed not just by the death
of metanarratives, but also by reflection upon the other phenomena I have
identified here as constituting the postmodern problematic. A shift of this sort
can extend in new ways the focus-already expressed in an account such as
Walzer's-on "listening" and sensitivity to the boundaries of diverse spheres
of social meaning. And it can do so in ways which do not radically depart
from, but rather build upon and enrich the most reflective moral judgments of
modern subjects.
NOTES
1. Cf., for example, Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting
(New York: Basic Books, 1973); Mark Poster, Foucault, Marxism and History: Mode of Production
versus Mode of Information (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1984); Timothy W. Luke, "Informationalism
and Ecology," Telos 56 (Summer 1983); and Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984).
2. When I speak of "postmodern theorists" in this paper, I will be referring to a varied set of thinkers.
What links them together for my purposes is not a set of common ideas, but rather their sustained
reflection upon the problematic I identify.
3. Lyotard, p. xxiv.
4. Included within the category of "post-metaphysical" would be philosophers such as Heidegger,
Gadamer, Foucault, Oakeshott and Rorty.
5. Lyotard, p. 27.
6. Lyotard, pp. 66--67; and Jiirgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikatives Handelns: Zur Kritik der
functionalistischen Vernunft, Vol II. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 571-73; and Luke, "Inform-
ationalism and Ecology."
7. Cf. Benjamin Barber, Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1984), Chapter Ten.
8. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Random House, 1977), pp. 170, 182-84,208-09,
222, 224); The History of Sexuality, Volume One: An Introduction (New York: Random House, 1980),
Part Five; Habermas, Theorie des kommunikatives Handelns, Chapter Eight; and Lyotard, Postmodern
Condition, pp. 47-67.
9. On "new social movements," see the special issue of Social Research on this topic, especially the article
by Jean Cohen, "Strategy or Identity: New Theorectical Paradigms and Contemporary Social
Movements," Social Research 52 (Winter 1985), pp. 663-716. On "post-materialist" values, see
Ronald Inglehart, The Silent Revolution: Changing Values and Political Styles Among Western Publics
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977).
10. Habermas, "New Social movements," Telos 49 (Fall 1981), pp. 33-37.
11. Foucault, History of Sexuality, pp. 95-96; Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne: Zwolf
Vorlesungen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1985), pp. 418-19; 422-24; Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, p.
xxiv; and Theodore Mills Norton, "Line of Flight: Gilles Deleuze, or Political Science Fiction," J.Vew
Political Science 15 (Summer 1985), pp. 77-93.
318 Praxis International
12. Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books,
1983); and Jean-Francois Lyotard and Jean-Loup Thebaud, Just Gaming (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1985).
13. Walzer, pp. xiv, 4,312-315; and LyotardJust Gaming, pp. 58-59, 71-72, 87-88.
14. Stephen K. White, "Post-Structuralism and Political Reflection," Political Theory (forthcoming).
15. Walzer, pp. xviii and passim.
16. Walzer, pp. 315-17.
17. Foucault, Discipline and Punish and The History of Sexuality.
18. Cf. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikatives Handelns, pp. 481-83, 521-22; and Kathy Ferguson, The
Feminist Case against Bureaucracy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press), pp. 59-79.
19. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by Guenther Roth and
Claus Wittich. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978).
19a. Religious fundamentalist groups may be more susceptible to Weberian analysis in terms of the
charismatic authority of television evangelists. Cf. Timothy W. Luke, "From Fundamentalism to
Televangelism," Telos 58 (Winter 1983-84). They also could be separated from other new social
movements on the grounds that they tend to be intolerant of diversity in forms of life.
20. See, for example, Foucault, "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," in Paul
Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 343. On Habermas, see Chapter
Five of my The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas: Reason, Justice and Modernity (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1987). Lyotard has not explicitly discussed new social movements, but
the direction of his thought would seem strongly supportive of them.
21. Foucault, "Politics and Ethics" in The Foucault Reader, pp. 373-80.
22. To anyone familiar with Lyotard, my linking of him with Habermas will seem to manifest an
egregious misunderstanding. For Lyotard's thinking about justice is explicitly defined as taking a
position in opposition to Habermas. The latter, according to Lyotard, constructs his discourse around
the idea of consensus, a strategy that inevitably devalues dissensus, multiplicity, otherness; in short,
openness to the unknown. (Postmodern Condition, pp. xxv; 60--65). This interpretation, although
common, is fundamentally incorrect, a fact I have tried to demonstrate elsewhere. (Chapter Four, The
Recent Work of Habermas). There are certainly important differences between the normative
orientations of Habermas and Lyotard, but Habermas' is not as corrosive of otherness as Lyotard
implies.
23. Frederic Jameson incorrectly lumps Lyotard together with other post-structuralists who seek only to
elucidate some strategy for "surviving under capitalism." ("Forward" to Postmodern Condition, p.
xviii). This seems to me to overlook the clear implications ofJust Gaming, originally published in the
same year as The Postmodern Condition.
24. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, p. 67; Just Gaming, p. 100.
25. Walzer, Spheres ofJustice, p. 313.
26. Cf. Timothy W. Luke and Stephen K. White, "Critical Theory, the Informational Revolution and an
Ecological Path to Modernity" in John Forester, ed., Critical Theory and Public Life (Cambridge:
MIT Press, 1985), pp. 22-53.
27. Nancy Fraser, "Toward a Discourse Ethic of Solidarity," Praxis InternationalVol5 (January 1986), p.
425.
28. Walzer, p. 10.
29. Walzer, pp. xii, 314.
30. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, pp. 43, 60-61.
31. Lyotard, pp. 59-60.
32. Lyotard, Just Gaming, pp. 46-47, 73 ff.
33. Lyotard, pp. 59, 87.
34. Cf. Plato, The Republic, 586 b.
35. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 183, 239-40.
36. Ibid.
37. Habermas, Theorie des kommunicatives Handelns, pp. 420 ff.
38. See Chapters Three and Four of my The Recent Work ofJurgen Habermas.
39. An aesthetic-expressive rationale cannot, by itself, provide the necessary perspective, as Lyotard
acknowledges (Just Gaming, p. 90).
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319
40. Walzer, Spheres ofJustice, p. 313.
41. Lyle A. Downing and Robert B. Thigpen, "Beyond Shared Understandings," Political Theory 14
(August 1986), pp. 45fr-57.
42. Lyotard, Postmodern Condition, p. 66.
43. Ibid.
44. Cf. my "Habermas' Communicative Ethics and the Development of Moral Consciousness,"
Philosophy and Social Criticism 10 (Fall 1984), pp. 41-42; and Seyla Benhabib, "Epistemologies of
Postmodernism: ARejoinder to Jean-Francois Lyotard," New German Critique 33 (Fall 1984), p. 124.
45. See Chapter Four of The Recent Work ofJurgen Habermas.
46. This particular way of endorsing equality finds its justification in the context of Habermas' general
interpretation of the cultural potential of modernity.