Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [89]
But here there arises a difficult question: Equals in what respect? That depends on what we’re distributing—and on the virtues relevant to those things.
Suppose we’re distributing flutes. Who should get the best ones? Aristotle’s answer: the best flute players.
Justice discriminates according to merit, according to the relevant excellence. And in the case of flute playing, the relevant merit is the ability to play well. It would be unjust to discriminate on any other basis, such as wealth, or nobility of birth, or physical beauty, or chance (a lottery).
Birth and beauty may be greater goods than ability to play the flute, and those who possess them may, upon balance, surpass the flute-player more in these qualities than he surpasses them in his flute-playing; but the fact remains that he is the man who ought to get the better supply of flutes.3
There is something funny about comparing excellences across vastly disparate dimensions. It may not even make sense to ask, “Am I more handsome than she is a good lacrosse player?” Or, “Was Babe Ruth a greater baseball player than Shakespeare was a playwright?” Questions such as these may make sense only as parlor games. Aristotle’s point is that, in distributing flutes, we should not look for the richest or best-looking or even the best person overall. We should look for the best flute player.
This idea is perfectly familiar. Many orchestras conduct auditions behind a screen, so that the quality of the music can be judged without bias or distraction. Less familiar is Aristotle’s reason. The most obvious reason for giving the best flutes to the best flute players is that doing so will produce the best music, making us listeners better off. But this is not Aristotle’s reason. He thinks the best flutes should go to the best flute players because that’s what flutes are for—to be played well.
The purpose of flutes is to produce excellent music. Those who can best realize this purpose ought to have the best ones.
Now it’s also true that giving the best instruments to the best musicians will have the welcome effect of producing the best music, which everyone will enjoy—producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number. But it’s important to see that Aristotle’s reason goes beyond this utilitarian consideration.
His way of reasoning from the purpose of a good to the proper allocation of the good is an instance of teleological reasoning. (Teleological comes from the Greek word telos, which means purpose, end, or goal.) Aristotle claims that in order to determine the just distribution of a good, we have to inquire into the telos, or purpose, of the good being distributed.
Teleological Thinking: Tennis Courts and Winnie-the-Pooh
Teleological reasoning may seem a strange way to think about justice, but it does have a certain plausibility. Suppose you have to decide how to allocate use of the best tennis courts on a college campus. You might give priority to those who can pay the most for them, by setting a high fee. Or you might give priority to campus big shots—the president of the college, say, or the Nobel Prize–winning scientists. But suppose two renowned scientists were playing a rather indifferent tennis game, barely getting the ball over the net, and the varsity tennis team came along, wanting to use the court. Wouldn’t you say that the scientists should move to a lesser court so that the varsity players could use the best one? And wouldn’t your reason be that excellent tennis players can make the best use of the best courts, which are wasted on mediocre players?
Or suppose a Stradivarius violin is for up sale, and a wealthy collector outbids Itzhak Perlman for it. The collector wants to display the violin in his living room. Wouldn’t we regard this as something of a loss, perhaps even an injustice—not because we think the auction is unfair, but because the outcome is unfitting? Lying behind this reaction may be the (teleological) thought that a Stradivarius is meant to be played, not displayed.
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