Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [88]
Here is my hunch: his resentment probably reflects a sense that Callie is being accorded an honor she doesn’t deserve, in a way that mocks the pride he takes in his daughter’s cheerleading prowess. If great cheerleading is something that can be done from a wheelchair, then the honor accorded those who excel at tumbles and splits is depreciated to some degree.
If Callie should be a cheerleader because she displays, despite her disability, the virtues appropriate to the role, her claim does pose a certain threat to the honor accorded the other cheerleaders. The gymnastic skills they display no longer appear essential to excellence in cheerleading, only one way among others of rousing the crowd. Ungenerous though he was, the father of the head cheerleader correctly grasped what was at stake. A social practice once taken as fixed in its purpose and in the honors it bestowed was now, thanks to Callie, redefined. She had shown that there’s more than one way to be a cheerleader.
Notice the connection between the first question, about fairness, and the second, about honor and resentment. In order to determine a fair way to allocate cheerleading positions, we need to determine the nature and purpose of cheerleading. Otherwise, we have no way of saying what qualities are essential to it. But determining the essence of cheerleading can be controversial, because it embroils us in arguments about what qualities are worthy of honor. What counts as the purpose of cheerleading depends partly on what virtues you think deserve recognition and reward.
As this episode shows, social practices such as cheerleading have not only an instrumental purpose (cheering on the team) but also an honorific, or exemplary, purpose (celebrating certain excellences and virtues). In choosing its cheerleaders, the high school not only promotes school spirit but also makes a statement about the qualities it hopes students will admire and emulate. This explains why the dispute was so intense. It also explains what is otherwise puzzling—how those already on the team (and their parents) could feel they had a personal stake in the debate over Callie’s eligibility. These parents wanted cheerleading to honor the traditional cheerleader virtues their daughters possessed.
Justice, Telos, and Honor
Seen in this way, the dustup over cheerleaders in West Texas is a short course in Aristotle’s theory of justice. Central to Aristotle’s political philosophy are two ideas, both present in the argument over Callie:
Justice is teleological. Defining rights requires us to figure out the telos (the purpose, end, or essential nature) of the social practice in question.
Justice is honorific. To reason about the telos of a practice—or to argue about it—is, at least in part, to reason or argue about what virtues it should honor and reward.
The key to understanding Aristotle’s ethics and politics is to see the force of these two considerations, and the relation between them.
Modern theories of justice try to separate questions of fairness and rights from arguments about honor, virtue, and moral desert. They seek principles of justice that are neutral among ends, and enable people to choose and pursue their ends for themselves. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.) does not think justice can be neutral in this way. He believes that debates about justice are, unavoidably, debates about honor, virtue, and the nature of the good life.
Seeing why Aristotle thinks justice and the good life must be connected will help us see what’s at stake in the effort to separate them.
For Aristotle, justice means giving people what they deserve, giving each person his or her due. But what is a person due? What are the relevant grounds of merit or desert? That depends on what’s being distributed. Justice involves two factors: “things, and the persons to whom things are assigned.” And in general we say that