Convergence,Incommensurability,Contradiction,or Overlapping Consensus? A Response to Daniel Weiss

What, then, are the various implications of the evolutionary and meta-ethical discussions of the phenomena of cooperation, reciprocity and altruism that have served as the focal points for our recent conversations for the ‘higher order’ phenomenon of human social cooperation? And more specifically, how can, and how ought, these diverse and conflicting conceptions shape our collective understandings of the phenomenon of human social cooperation within contemporary political contexts that are characterized by an irreducible plurality of ethical, cultural and religious perspectives and practices? Is there any shared basis rooted in either our common human nature, or in that common nature’s extension in the phenomenon of culture, that might serve as a means of illuminating the phenomenon of social cooperation amidst conditions of religious and cultural plurality? Or is the phenomenon of human social cooperation so far removed from its evolutionary roots as to render a bridging of the gap impossible? In leaving these questions wide open, in response to Daniel Weiss’s essay, I should like to engage very briefly with the views on social cooperation of another eminent Harvardian, the late Anglo-American political philosopher John Rawls. Rawls’s account of social cooperation serves to shed light on how we might further consider the relation between the various levels of cooperation that we have been discussing, and to address the problematic that Daniel Weiss develops. ¹

Those familiar with the Rawlsian paradigm will recognize immediately the centrality of ideas of social cooperation and of moral reciprocity within it; indeed cooperation forms the backbone of Rawls’s account of political justice. ² In the introduction to his later work Political Liberalism, Rawls poses with some pointedness the question of how there might exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable yet incommensurable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines. Rawls’s well-contested, and perhaps by now to many, overly familiar response is that the possibility of a reasonably just and well-ordered society might be most effectively realized via the sustained achievement of a stable overlapping consensus amongst the main ethical and religious perspectives that endure within the society. On Rawls’s view, the focal point of the desired practical consensus is a ‘strictly’ political or freestanding conception of justice that is extracted and constructed from the practices and traditions inherent in the public political culture of the society rather than a conception that reflects a theoretical constellation of the particular ethical and religious worldviews that inhabit it. This practical political conception of justice, which can in principle be affirmed from any number of comprehensive ethical and religious perspectives, is comprised not only of principles of justice (notably the liberty principle and the difference principle), but also distinctive ‘political’ conceptions of the person and of society, and canons of collective public rationality and evidence (those elements which comprise what Rawls deems ‘public reason’). Rawls is clear to emphasize that the development of an overlapping consensus on a political conception of justice represents neither a mere ‘modus vivendi’—a strategic and unstable balance of political power between conflicted societal factions—nor a juridical consensus at the level of the constitution, but rather, a deeper moral agreement between diverse persons in their social role as citizens.

What, then, is the content of this consensus, and how, more precisely, might this consensus be achieved? Rawls’s proposal is that for the purposes of collective political deliberation and action, democratic citizens should re-envision themselves and their social relations in the following ways:

First, they should conceive of themselves as free and equal citizens, the self-authenticating sources of moral claims and bearers of a (revisable) moral identity, exercising moral responsibility for their various choices.

Second, as citizens, they should conceive of themselves as both reasonable and rational, possessing a sense of justice and a capacity for forming, revising and pursuing a conception of the good, while engaged in the process of social cooperation. ‘Reasonableness’ signifies a commitment to reciprocity—the willingness, first, to propose and to abide by fair terms of cooperation given the assurance that others will do so, and second, to govern one’s social relations in accordance with those shared principles. ‘Reasonableness’ also signifies an acknowledgement, first, of the various sources of rational moral disagreement and second, of the improbability of unforced moral and theological convergence amidst modern conditions of political freedom. In contrast, within the Rawlsian framework, ‘rationality’ signifies the capacity for critical rationality via which various ends, projects and plans of life and the means to their realization are adopted, pursued, re-examined and relinquished.

Third, as citizens, they should conceive of themselves as social cooperators, that is to say, fully cooperating participants in society itself conceived as a fair system of cooperation amongst free and equal persons. Rawls proposes that reasonable persons desire, first, a social world where they as free and equal can cooperate with others on terms that all are able to accept given their freedom and equality, and second, to be publicly recognized as socially cooperative.

Rawls is clear to emphasize that social cooperation is not merely a matter of social coordination, but a public and teleological rule-governed activity (i.e., governed by those rules that are reciprocally provided) directed toward the justification (making just) or well-ordering of society. While the modern situation of religious, ethical and cultural plurality precludes the possibility of fully realizing politically the eschatological reality within history, democratic citizens can nevertheless cooperate with those with whom they lack fundamental religious or theological agreement in the pursuit of what perhaps remains an imperfect and provisional justice. In locating reciprocity on a continuum between impartiality/altruism (one’s being moved by the general good) and mutual advantage (one’s being advantaged with respect to one’s present or expected situation as one is), Rawls’s hope is that through the various relations of reciprocity expressed in the collective pursuit of justice (which for Rawls is the paradigmatic form of moral reasonableness), it should be practically possible to establish deep social bonds and to foster sufficient mutual trust so as to alleviate the effects of the ‘strains of commitment’ (those burdens that are experienced by persons and communities in honoring over time the terms of cooperation reasonably established) and to allow for a genuine, relatively stable, and enduring social unity.

In the context of the discussion of our symposium, there are two features of Rawls’s account of social cooperation that are worth underscoring: the teleological nature of cooperation; and its reflexive nature. As we have seen, cooperation, at least in the human context, is always cooperation that is directed towards the realization of some end or goal, according to which it receives its relative value. Social cooperation is necessarily purposive, exhibiting signs of collective intentionality and collective agency. Moreover, social cooperation is reflexive, in the sense, again, that it involves a mutual awareness of being involved in a cooperative activity. The members of a symphony who cooperate in the performance of Beethoven’s fifth are not only teleologically directed towards the successful (or beautiful) performance of the musical arrangement; they are also consciously aware of their cooperation and collective participation in realizing the good of music. ³

How does the Rawlsian account of social cooperation relate to the argument that Daniel Weiss has developed? Weiss argues that game-theoretical approaches and religious-ethical approaches to the issue of cooperation provide us with two conflicting ethical ‘pictures’ (i.e., two conceptual schemes or paradigms) that persist in radical tension. Whereas the game-theoretical approach endorses, even if unintentionally, an underlying meta-ethical commitment to the instrumentalization of the human person (which renders respect for her dignity and well-being subject to consequentialist considerations) and an endorsement of ethical egoism, the (primarily deontological) religious-ethical approach affirms the intrinsic value of each and every human person and it proposes an altruistic orientation. The first stage of Weiss’s argument is devoted to exploring the question of how these two ethical paradigms might be related, and here he suggests that there are (at least) three possible stances that one might adopt in this regard:

The unification of the two pictures (perhaps via reductionism);

Non-interactionism (in the vein of Stephen Jay Gould’s non-overlapping magisteria); and

Interactionism without resolution between the pictures (which Weiss characterizes as maintaining a fruitful tension of theoretical engagement).

Weiss argues that the first two strategies are problematic, if not indeed impossible to implement because of incommensurable foundational or first principles between the two pictures. In contrast, the third strategy can bring the ‘competing’ pictures into mutual engagement and criticism, resulting in a fruitful tension. Weiss claims, for example, that the religious-ethical perspective can press the game-theoretical approach to be more mindful of the deontological commitment to the intrinsic value of persons.

The second stage of Weiss’s argument is that, methodologically, we can move by analogy from this first scenario of inter-ethical engagement to that of a second: the situation of religious and cultural plurality within contemporary liberal societies. ⁴ As in the case of inter-ethical engagement, inter-religious conversation and friendship involves an encounter between persons holding positions that are in theological and metaphysical tension. And as with inter-ethical engagement, one can adopt one of three strategies: one can attempt to unify the two perspectives, one can insist that the perspectives are radically incommensurable, or one can attempt to bring them into fruitful conversation. In advocating the third strategy Weiss argues that the process of inter-religious conversation—laden as it is with the depth of religious particularity—can serve to deepen and to expand both one’s self-understanding as a member of a particular religious tradition, and also one’s appreciation of the tradition of one’s interlocutor, by providing one with a richer sense of where the boundaries of religious traditions lie. The perhaps somewhat implicit conclusion of Weiss’s paper is that for the mutual benefit of all persons and groups in a culturally and religiously plural democratic society, there is a need to move from a state of detrimental contradiction (the denial of difference via forced unification or the segregation of difference) to one of fruitful contradiction.

One might interpret Weiss’s argument in terms of an attempt at what one might call ‘theoretical reconciliation’—the resolution of the theoretical tension that is generated by apparently conflicting or contradictory principles or commitments between two competing theoretical paradigms. Here the main question concerns the issues of relative incommensurability and translation (such that ‘unification’ implies commensurability and the possibility of conceptual translation; ‘non-interactionism’, radical incommensurability; ‘interactionism’, moderate incommensurability without precluding the possibility of communication). If we are to interpret Weiss’s argument along these lines, then I believe that he has made a persuasive case for interactionism in both the inter-ethical and inter-religious contexts. Irreducibly contradictory theoretical paradigms can indeed serve to shed light on one another in the various ways that he has suggested resulting in a fruitful tension between perspectives. ⁵

Yet I wonder whether theoretical reconciliation is really what is at stake here, or at least, all that is at stake. I am persuaded by Weiss’s characterization of inter-religious conversation as one account of how members of different communities of faith might engage fruitfully with one another. What he apparently has in mind is a dialogical model of the type that is commonly associated, for example, with the practice of ‘Scriptural Reasoning’, wherein Jews, Christians and Muslims engage in the communal practice of reading and interpreting the classical scriptural texts of one another’s traditions. ⁶ Practitioners do so with a view to deepening mutual understanding and to promoting reconciliation and the building and fostering of bonds of inter-religious community rather than with the goal of theological convergence. The ‘common aim’ of Scriptural Reasoning is not to unify existing religious traditions either by denying their particularity via reduction to some common element or by eliminating religious difference through proselytism. At the same time, practitioners of Scriptural Reasoning performatively embody the denial that the deep particularity of religious traditions implies a radical incommensurability that might render inter-religious conversation impossible. The mutually self-conscious process of inter-religious encounter and engagement recognizes the depth of religious and cultural difference that obtains, as well as the various tensions that sometimes obtain within the space of such difference, without attempting to resolve the tensions or to eliminate religious difference. Moreover, although the practitioners of Scriptural Reasoning possess a common understanding of the practice—as directed towards the building of friendship and community—the full theorization of what is actually transpiring in the practice is left to the members of each religious tradition.

This characterization of the practice of Scriptural Reasoning suggests that there are important similarities between it and the practice of political justice in the Rawlsian account, with its emphasis on the teleological character of social cooperation and on the self-understanding of persons (as citizens) as consciously involved in a collaborative endeavor that is directed towards the promotion of human well-being. As is the case with Rawlsian citizens, participants in the practice of Scriptural Reasoning ‘come to the table with different narratives, different philosophical practices, different presuppositions, and even different scriptures’. ⁷ And although they are all ethically committed monotheists, their common monotheism is inflected differently and their ethical practices are themselves distinctive. Moreover, even while engaged in the cooperative pursuit of a participatory communal good (the good of friendship), participants in the practice of Scriptural Reasoning nevertheless possess and retain their own distinctive conceptions of the good (or those of their respective religious tradition). Finally, the practice of Scriptural Reasoning appears to share the Rawlsian strategy of ‘epistemic abstinence’ (i.e., of abstracting from deep metaphysical disagreements in order to find common practical political ground), in as much as the practice of Scriptural Reasoning accommodates the persisting diversity of religious and ethical views, while resisting the temptation to judge one or another view to be (metaphysically or theologically) true within the confines of the practice itself. Participants in the practice clearly hold deep convictions concerning the metaphysical truth of their own perspective, yet they make no collective inter-subjective judgment concerning the relative truth of any of the three traditions. In Rawlsian terms, the practice of Scriptural Reasoning allows for the possibility of ‘reasonable disagreement’—i.e., the state of persistent and unresolved fundamental (metaphysical or theological) disagreement—amongst participants in the practice without attributing this disagreement to moral or epistemic failure. ⁸ Epistemic abstinence in the case of inter-religious conversation and friendship is not a matter of theological or ethical skepticism, but rather, an acknowledgement of the fluidity and indeterminacy of human reason (and faith) under conditions of relative political freedom. The upshot of this realization is that (at least in principle) we can cooperate together inter-religiously without having first (and, indeed, ever) resolved our various metaphysical and theological differences.

These theoretical and practical similarities between the practice of Scriptural Reasoning and the Rawlsian practice of political justice suggest that the model of inter-religious dialogue proposed by Weiss is indeed a valuable practice for enhancing social cooperation and for building social solidarity in a culturally and religiously plural liberal society. Nevertheless, in concluding I would like to propose that in spite of the virtues of the model of inter-religious dialogue outlined above there are nevertheless significant differences between the two dialogical contexts (the inter-disciplinary or inter-ethical and the inter-religious) that should give us some pause concerning the proposed analogical movement/parallel from the inter-ethical context to the inter-religious one. ⁹

The inter-religious conversational context is one that is governed by certain dialogical principles of mutual respect and concern that serve as preconditions for the ongoing encounter and exchange amongst the participants in the practice. The primary concern in the inter-religious context is not with the engagement of theoretical paradigms and with theoretical adequacy (i.e., it is not concerned with demonstrating the superiority of one conceptual scheme over another), but with the deepening of self- and mutual understanding and the building up of communities. This is why the practice of Scriptural Reasoning can be properly regarded as a practice of social cooperation directed towards genuinely good ends, but a practice that is nevertheless not dependent on the prior possession of a shared comprehensive conception of the good, or a shared theoretical commitment to the same worldview.

In contrast, in the inter-ethical context (inhabited by the game-theoretical and religious-ethical perspectives), the common end appears to be exactly that which the inter-religious scenario foregoes: namely, the goal of ascertaining which of the ‘competing’ ethical paradigms is true (or perhaps efficient or most useful). This is not to imply that inter-ethical exchanges of the kind described by Weiss will necessarily be agonistic (though, consider, for example, the sometimes acrimonious exchanges between Alvin Plantinga and Daniel Dennett, or between Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould or Mary Midgley), but rather, that they will nevertheless generally be primarily truth-directed in a way that the inter-religious paradigm need not be (i.e., geared towards truth-tracking). ¹⁰ In characterizing the interaction of game-theoretical and religious-ethical paradigms in this way, I do not intend to suggest that religious ethical paradigms either cannot or ought not to engage with other paradigms (and to grow and deepen in various fruitful ways in so doing)—as a theological ethicist, I believe that they absolutely must. I do mean to claim, however, that the nature and process of the various interactions will be suitably shaped by the understandings of the interacting perspectives themselves, that is to say, the ends to which the adherents of the perspectives see their mutual inquiry to be directed, and the ends to which it is actually directed. I have suggested that in the present case there is a kind of ‘structural difference’ between the two interactive contexts, and that this is in part due to the distinctive self-understandings of the participants who are engaged in the dialogical process itself. Participants in the practice of Scriptural Reasoning have some shared and cooperative understanding of what they are doing when they engage in the practice; it is not as clear to me that participants in the inter-ethical conversation have a shared understanding of what they are doing, and to the extent that they do, it does indeed appear to be one of (perhaps agonistic?) dialogical encounter ‘aimed at winning’ (i.e., of exposing the inadequacies of the other competing paradigm) rather than dialogical encounter ‘aimed at social cooperation’. ¹¹ In other words, there is something in the nature of the inter-ethical context that presses forcefully either in the direction of radical incommensurability—a failure in communication—or in the direction of resolution and theoretical unification—theoretical convergence—rather than providing for the possibility of unresolved interaction (residual tension) between competing or conflicting perspectives. In the final analysis, in order to gain a better sense of the potential for fruitful interaction and in order for the inter-ethical paradigm to ‘translate’ into more concrete practical terms, we need to gain a better sense of how the paradigm might fit into broader practices and processes of social cooperation.