professional humanitarians are among those who have been most honest about the
lazy assumptions and contradictions of their practice. Similarly, the political
philosophers most central to the argument, Richard Rorty, Michael Walzer, Amartya
Sen, and Judith Shklar have all, in different ways, been instrumental in undermining
some of the assumptions of the dominant strands of thought in liberal political
philosophy, or at least moving beyond stale dichotomies. Rorty has argued that a
liberal humanitarian perspective is strengthened, rather than weakened, when not
distracted by the pursuit of a true human essence, or the pursuit of an attainable
political community of humanity. Walzer, by engaging in what Jon Elster disparaged
as “a phenomenology of the moral life”, has illustrated the extent to which we walk
the earth not as liberal abstractions but as living, breathing people with complex
bundles of visceral and ambiguous commitments, some of which, he hopes, will be
or become liberal.^127 Sen, throughout his work, has demonstrated how apparently
benign abstractions, when they shift from means to ends, can hamper the
achievement of the very goals they were initially designed to foster. The “rational
fool” and the starving rights-holder are both victims of such perspectives.^128 His
warning of the dangers of pursuing transcendental ideals will, in particular,
influence the argument made in Chapter 5.^129 Shklar has pointed to the subtle
differences in perspective that come from paying attention to negative concepts
like cruelty and injustice, rather than jumping straight into definitive articulations of
justice.
Importantly, though, these figures remain deeply committed to a liberal
humanitarian worldview. They are all internal, rather than external critics, to this
intellectual practice. To some extent this takes on board Michael Walzer’s argument
about the extra perspective that internal criticism affords.^130 But somewhat against
this, we might remember a neat anecdote related by Martha Nussbaum, who, in
the context of a rural education project for girls, asked an educated urban woman
127
128 Cited in Brown, Sovereignty, Rights and Justice , 94.
The phrase comes from Amartya Sen, "Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral
Foundations of Economic Theory", 129 Philosophy & Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977).
130 Amartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (London: Allen Lane, 2009).
Michael Walzer, The Company of Critics: Social Criticism and Political Commitment in the
Twentieth Century (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
marcin
(Marcin)
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