On the circumstances of justice
| Author | Adam J Tebble |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885116664191 |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2020, Vol. 19(1) 3–25
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885116664191
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Article
On the circumstances
of justice
Adam J Tebble
Department of Political Economy, King’s College London,
London, UK
Abstract
An epistemic account of the circumstances of justice allows one to make three import-
ant claims about the Humean and Rawlsian ‘standard account’ of those circumstances.
First, and contrary to Hume, the possibility and necessity of justice are rooted not in
limited beneficence or confined generosity, but in the epistemic insight that the know-
ledge relevant to deciding what to do with the fruits of social cooperation is for a
variety of reasons uncentralisable. Second, and regardless of whether Rawlsian ethical
disagreement is more persuasive as a circumstance of justice than Humean confined
generosity, it does not explain the possibility and necessity of justice, for the uncen-
tralisability of social knowledge would be decisive even under conditions of unanimity.
Finally, the epistemic account not only shows what the circumstances of justice are but,
contra Cohen’s critique of the standard account, also provides at least some guidance as
to what justice itself may be.
Keywords
Hume, Rawls, Hayek, Cohen, epistemic liberalism, circumstances of justice
Introduction
The idea of the circumstances of justice, or those facts that explain both the pos-
sibility and necessity of justice, has a long pedigree in political philosophy and
makes an appearance in many of the works familiar to the student of the discipline.
Most notable here is an account of those circumstances often attributed to David
Hume which, as Vanderschraaf (2006: 344, n.7) and others have commented, is
almost unanimously accepted by contemporary political philosophers. To be sure,
there is some debate as to whether Hume should be considered the undisputed
father of the notion of the circumstances of justice. As Vanderschraaf (2006: 344,
n.7) has also noted, aspects of Hume’s account are foreshadowed in both Plato and
Aristotle, as well as in St. Thomas Aquinas and Hobbes, although unlike the Scot
Corresponding author:
Adam J Tebble, Department of Political Economy, King’s College London, London, UK.
Email: adam.tebble@kcl.ac.uk
none of these thinkers made self-conscious reference to the idea of the circum-
stances of justice per se in their respective discussions.
Interesting and insightful as these earlier contributions are, it will not be our
objective to discuss them at length here. Rather, we will be concerned to question
the persuasiveness of the modern, or standard, account of the circumstances of
justice, understood as that attributed to Hume and subsequently developed by
John Rawls.
1
To this end, I will defend a substantial revision of the standard
account as part of a wider argument that questions whether Hume’s and Rawls’s
respective characterisations of the circumstances of justice do the explanatory work
expected of them. In the section that follows, and in acknowledging the significant
differences with regard to theoretical aims and objectives that exist between them, I
will set out both the account of the circumstances of justice attributed to Hume and
Rawls’s development of that account, via his discussion of confined generosity and
ethical disagreement as circumstances of justice in A Theory of Justice. Subsequent
to this, I will lay the groundwork for my revision of the standard account by
examining G. A. Cohen and Michael Sandel’s discussions of Rawls on ethical
disagreement. In the case of Cohen, we will see that disagreement militates against
the significance of a circumstance that both Hume and Rawls include in their
accounts: moderate scarcity. Moreover, in the case of Sandel, and whilst failing
to dislodge it as a circumstance of justice, we will see that there emerges a signifi-
cant problem with Rawlsian disagreement that necessitates a major revision of the
standard account. Building upon this, I will defend an alternative account of the
circumstances of justice that emerges from a consideration of what authors work-
ing in the epistemic tradition of liberalism call society’s knowledge problem.
Central here will be the claim that the standard account errs in positing either
confined generosity or the propensity to disagree as explanations of the possibility
and necessity of justice. Rather, it is the altogether different need to coordinate
human knowledge with regard to the ends of life and the means to pursue them that
accounts for the possibility and necessity of justice. I will conclude my argument by
considering how, if at all, our epistemic revision of the standard account may
respond to some possible objections. Among these will be Cohen’s critique of
the standard account as containing hidden ideological commitments. In responding
to Cohen, I will claim that the circumstances of justice do not only offer guidance
with respect to the conceptual question of the conditions that make justice possible
and necessary, but also with respect to the question of what justice substantively
requires.
The standard account
Hume, moderate scarcity and confined generosity
Traditionally understood, the circumstances of justice are those facts that explain
both the possibility and necessity of justice. In the modern era what is called the
standard account of those circumstances is associated with Hume and Rawls,
4European Journal of Political Theory 19(1)
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