The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgment

Brendan Case

• Editore: T&T Clark
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780567697691
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Teologia e religione
• Categoria: Teologia

The Accountable Animal: Justice, Justification, and Judgement offers a theological meditation on the human being as an accountable animal. Brendan Case introduces the idea of accountability, not merely as a structural feature of human institutions, but as a disposition to submit to rightly-constituted authority, whether divine or human. He relates this conception of accountability to the key themes of "justice, justification, and judgment".

Chapter 1

“RENDERING TO EACH HIS RIGHT”: ACCOUNTABILITY AS A SUB-TYPE OF JUSTICE

Introduction: Accountable Animals

In the Introduction, we considered two obligations which Senator Mitt Romney described himself as bearing in his capacity as a juror in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump: first, an obligation to the accused, to render an impartial verdict; and second, a sworn obligation to God to discharge the first faithfully. In this chapter, I want to widen the aperture, to consider the possibility that accountability goes to the heart of what is distinctive about the human way of being; we are rational or political or blushing animals, yes, but perhaps only because we are essentially accountable animals. In a recent edited volume, Neil Roughley has explored a similar notion, suggesting that the classic and apparently competing descriptions of human beings as “essentially rational, linguistic, social, or moral creatures” are ultimately “compatible because they all ground in a more basic feature: that of being creatures whose lives are structured at a fundamental level by their relationships to norms.”¹ Roughley notes that responsiveness to norms requires an openness to being held to account for respecting them; recognizing a norm implies recognizing a community (if only ideal) which upholds it, and before which one is answerable.²

I approach the thesis that we are essentially accountable animals along lines which are distinct from, but convergent with, those pursued by Roughley and his co-contributors. I argue, first, that the virtue of accountability is a sub-species of the virtue of justice, understood as “rendering to each his right (suum ius cuique tribuendo),” as in a venerable tradition running from at least Cicero to Nicholas Wolterstorff. (In what follows, I refer to this proposal and its exposition as “justice-as-rights-rendering,” or JRR—not to be confused with Tolkien!) Accountability, I suggest, is closely related to two virtues which Thomas Aquinas identified as “annexed” to justice, namely “religion” and “obedience.”

Second, I consider two arguments for regarding the virtue of accountability as a necessary condition for full human social and moral development. The first is taken from the famous discussion of “Lordship and Bondage” in G.W.F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, which proposes that any rational animal’s attempt to live unaccountably is self-undermining, since it necessarily deprives him of that moral recognition by his peers which is crucial for his own moral and intellectual flourishing.

In the chapter’s concluding sections, I describe the role played by accountability at a deeper level still of human nature, in our capacity for acquiring and deploying natural language. I suggest, following Nicholas Wolterstorff and Robert Brandom, among others, that language-use is distinguished from other kinds of reliably differential responses to stimuli—the thermostat’s hum as the temperature falls, the parrot’s squawked “Red!” when a red card appears—because it is a practice, not merely of responding to what is the case, but of undertaking and acknowledging epistemic duties and rights which bind us to our fellow reasoners in relations of mutual accountability. As Brandom proposed, reasoning is a form of “deontic³ scorekeeping,” which requires its practitioners to track the “commitments” they undertake, and the “entitlements” they license, in and through their assertions and other speech-acts.

Accountability as a Sub-Type of Justice

Let’s begin by reconsidering the two obligations which Senator Romney flagged in his floor speech, both to render an impartial verdict and to uphold his oath before God. Notice that both of these duties are tightly correlated with some legitimate claim which another—the president, God—is entitled to make of him. Or, we might say that Romney’s duties (obligations, moral commitments) are correlated with the president’s and God’s rights (legitimate claims, moral entitlements). I take it that all relations of accountability are structured by such pairs of duties and rights—in particular, subjective rights, understood in the sense of an individual’s entitlement to some state of affairs which would constitute a good in her life.⁴ These goods come in at least two kinds: negative goods of non-interference in one’s life by others, and positive goods actively supplied by others. A right to a negative good is a “permission-right,” while a right to a positive one is a “claim-right.”⁵ Now, everything to which I might have a right is a good in my life, but it does not follow from this that I have a right to everything which is or might be such a good: that p is a good in my life is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for my having a right to it. As Wolterstorff notes, it would be a good in one’s life to own an authentic Rembrandt, but that doesn’t on its own constitute a moral entitlement to the painting!⁶

Many of the goods which one might permissibly enjoy or claim are socially conferred: a US citizen aged sixty-five or older has a right to claim a monthly check from the Social Security Administration, but this is possible only if the relevant institutions exist.⁷ Are there any rights which aren’t socially conferred in this way, which a person enjoys simply by virtue of being the person he is? (Let’s call a right “natural” if it is not socially conferred, and reserve the label “human right” for a right which one enjoys simply by virtue of being a human being.⁸)

Consider the case, posed by Stephen Darwall, of Jane’s standing painfully on John’s foot, and of his requesting that she move it.⁹ Now, Jane might have objective, “agent-neutral” reasons for heeding John’s request: as a good utilitarian, she might be committed to reducing the amount of pain in the world, or, as a good Kantian, she might be committed to undertaking only those actions which can be formulated in terms of the categorical imperative. But it seems intuitively right that, at least once John has issued the request, and perhaps even before, she has an important subjective, “agent-relative” reason for acceding to it, namely that he has a well-founded authority to claim immunity from (i.e., a permission-right against) being stood-on painfully. Jane’s duty in this case is neither “third-personal,” reducing to a stable equilibrium solution to the problem of minimizing global harms; nor “first-personal,” reducing to the apodictic deliverances of rational introspection. Rather, it is “second-personal,” arising as if by an invisible hand from her recognition of the ways in which John’s moral worth impinges on and limits her actions.¹⁰

Note that the threefold structure of rights-talk (X has a right to Y) in the above cases doesn’t commit us to the independent existence of abstract objects called “rights,” any more than talk of Bob’s getting a grip on his coffee mug commits us to the existence of a “grip” over and above the mug and Bob. As Wolterstorff emphasizes:

Possessing a right does not consist of standing in the relation of possessing to some member of a peculiar species of entity called “rights.” The entire phrase, “possessing a right to,” names the relation. “Mary has a right to X” just means that X is rightfully Mary’s … One’s rights consist of those entities to which one stands in the relation of having a right to them.¹¹

Rather than abstract objects, rights as JRR conceives them are intrinsically social relations. The fact that John possesses a right not to be stepped on entails that Jane possesses a duty not to step on him;¹² the two are subject to what Wolterstorff calls the “principle of correlatives,” such that every right possessed by one implies a correlative duty possessed by some or all others to respect or render that right.¹³

In its central case, then, accountability as a forward-looking virtue might be thought of as a person’s sensitivity to the rights held against him by those who bear authority over him. But this means that forward-looking accountability is at least closely related to the virtue of justice, which, in the canonical definition given of it in the opening of Justinian’s Institutes, “is a constant, perpetual will, rendering to everyone his own right (constans et perpetua voluntas ius suum unicuique tribuens).”¹⁴ This is so, at least, if the ius which justice disposes us to render is a subjective right of the sort I described above.

But is it? This has long been a matter of controversy. Some see at least natural subjective rights as (like social media) execrable artifacts of modern individualism, voluntarism, and general anomie, undermining thick communities and the genuine virtues which sustain them by encouraging a fixation on individual entitlements to the exclusion of common goods.¹⁵ The classic case for subjective rights as a corruption rather than expression of justice was made by Michel Villey, who argued for the stark incompatibility of “objective natural right,” understood as the correct social order which the virtue of justice disposes us to maintain, with “subjective natural rights,” and located a transition from the former to the latter framework in the late Middle Ages.¹⁶ More recent scholarship, however, represented particularly by Brian Tierney, emphasizes the fundamental compatibility of objective right and subjective rights, and sees instead a gradually increasing emphasis on the subjective dimension of “ius” in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹⁷

The interpretation of JRR has been agonistic from the start, since it entered the history of philosophy as the second definition of justice considered and quickly rejected in Plato’s Republic.¹⁸ After Plato’s criticism, its fortunes revived, however, as it was taken up and endorsed by Romans writing in Latin, notably Marcus Tullius Cicero, who often cited it, without qualification or commentary, as a summary of the virtue of justice.¹⁹ Following Cicero, this definition of justice was taken up by ancient Christians, perhaps even St. Paul,²⁰ but certainly Augustine, who defines both divine justice in relation to humanity²¹ and human justice in relation to God in terms of giving each his due.²²

The most significant step in securing an enduring place for JRR within the West’s philosophical and especially legal culture, however, was its adoption by the third-century Roman jurist Ulpian, whose Institutes subsequently comprised much of the sixth-century Digest of Roman law compiled at the behest of Emperor Justinian. Ulpian wrote, “Justice is a constant and perpetual will to render to each his own right. The precepts of right are these: to live honestly, not to harm another, to render to each his own.”²³

The key innovation in this formulation over JRR’s appearance in Plato or Cicero is the specification of “one’s own (suum)” in terms of “ius,” a ticklish term whose sense covers roughly the semantic range occupied in ordinary English by the words “right” and “desert.” It includes both goods (specified by primary justice) and liabilities (specified by retributive justice), with the added complication that “ius” could also mean the law (written or unwritten) which specified these rights and duties, or the court in which it was administered.²⁴ My ius is what is due to me, whether by virtue of some act of legislation, or (as Ulpian’s three “precepts of ius” suggest) by virtue of entitlements which obtain naturally, pre-politically.

Understood in terms of rights-rendering, justice, uniquely among the cardinal virtues, is an essentially social vi...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents 
• Acknowledgements
• INTRODUCTION: “THOSE WITH PROMISES TO KEEP”
• Chapter 1 “RENDERING TO EACH HIS RIGHT”: ACCOUNTABILITY AS A SUB-TYPE OF JUSTICE
• Chapter 2 “YOU JUDGE EACH ACCORDING TO HIS WAYS”: EZEKIEL ON HUMAN OBEDIENCE, THE KILLING LETTER, AND THE LIFE-GIVING SPIRIT
• Chapter 3 “THE DOERS OF THE LAW WILL BE JUSTIFIED”: RESOLVING A PAULINE DILEMMA
• Chapter 4 CHRIST AS ADAM’S RIGHTEOUSNESS: EDENIC JUSTIFICATION AS A REASON FOR THE INCARNATION
• Chapter 5 FAMILY, POLITY, CHURCH: CORPORATE PERSONS AND THE ORIGINS OF ACCOUNTABILITY
• Chapter 6 FIERY FURNACES AND FINAL FARTHINGS: PURGATORY AND THE PROBLEM OF POSTMORTEM ACCOUNTABILITY
• Chapter 7 ON THE VARIETIES OF INFERNALIST EXPERIENCE: ACCOUNTABILITY IN EVERLASTING, ANNIHILATIONIST, AND PURGATORIAL HELLS
• CONCLUSION: WHAT’S NEXT?
• Bibliography
• Biblical Literature
• Index of Names
• Index of Subjects
• Imprint