ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: ‘Reason within’, ’Reason without’ and Virtue
Author: Ege Ragip, Igersheim Herrade
(co-written with Ragip Ege, BETA, University of Strasbourg) The purpose of this paper is to interrogate the interactions between two kinds of reason, the ‘reason within’ and the ‘reason without’, as well as their links with the notion of virtue. The distinction between the ‘reason within’ and the ‘reason without’ is reflected both in Adam Smith’s distinction between the “man within” and the “man without” (Smith, 1759, III, ii, 32, p. 150) and in Amartya Sen’s very recent proposal that there is a dichotomy between transcendental and comparative approaches to justice (Sen, 2009). Smith says: “The man within the breast, the abstract and ideal spectator of our sentiments and conduct, requires often to be awakened and put in mind of his duty, by the presence of the real spectator: and it is always that spectator, from whom we can expect the least sympathy and indulgence, that we are likely to learn the most complete lesson of self command” (Smith, 1759, III, iii, 38, p. 178). This passage expresses the two aspects of Smith’s concept of the “impartial spectator”. First, there is “the man within the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct” (Smith, 1759, III, iii, 4, p. 158). With respect to our investigation, this “man within the breast”, characterized by Smith as “reason, principle, conscience”, corresponds to the ‘reason within’, i.e., the capacity for reason which any moral subject possesses. But this needs to be “awakened” and stimulated by a “real spectator” who is also supposed to be impartial in so far as he stands at a “great distance” from us. Consequently, he is not involved in our present desires or interests, or concerned by the specific comprehensive doctrines which we may have adopted. In every respect, this real spectator matches what we call the “reason without”. The latter results from the other’s bursting into our self-contained world, thus affording us opportunity to examine our parochial habits and choices, i.e. our “natural station”, in the light of the rest of the world: “we can never survey our own sentiments and motives, we can never form any judgment concerning them, unless we remove ourselves, as it were, from our natural station, and endeavor to view them at a certain distance from us” (Smith, 1759, III, i, 2, p. 128). It is worth recalling that the Smithian notion of “distance” is neither spatial nor geographical. The real but impartial spectator denotes any citizen who partakes of different points of view, desires, etc., than the subject’s own. One can only remove oneself from one’s “natural station” by taking into account other points of view which are distant from one’s specific and local comprehension of the good. For Sen, meanwhile, there are two mutually exclusive traditions in the theory of social justice, traditions he refers to as “transcendental institutionalism” and “realization-focused comparison” (this account is developed in his Idea of Justice (2009)). While the former aims to identify an ideal of justice and the nature of just institutions broadly in the manner of Hobbes, Kant, Rousseau, and Rawls, the latter aims to give practical tools to discriminate between concrete situations, focusing on the outcomes of actual social institutions and not attempting to provide a definition of what a just institution should be. Smith, Condorcet, Bentham, and Sen himself, among others, belong to the latter tradition. Indeed, according to Sen, possessing an overall conception of justice is neither necessary nor sufficient to formulate comparative judgments regarding social justice. Hence, Sen’s epistemological choice is to favor the comparative tradition. His dichotomy and corresponding plea thus have deep consequences for social scientists, and especially for any economist or philosopher who wants to deal with the issue of social justice. Sen’s dichotomy as regards social justice corresponds to the dichotomy as regards reason which is addressed in this study. While this paper takes its inspiration from Smith’s theory, it aims to develop and to overcome (in the sense of the Hegelian Aufhebung) Sen’s dichotomy. In particular, this paper aims to show that this supposed mutual exclusivity can be overcome through a reinterpretation of the opposition between transcendental and comparative approaches by means of the paired concepts ‘reason within’ and ‘reason without’. Such a reinterpretation would thus allow a reconciliation of those two traditions. We argue, first, that the concept of ‘reason within’ harbors a transcendental feature; this is what Kant — most likely after reading Smith’s work — calls the “impartial reasonable spectator” (vernünftiger unparteiischer Zuschauer) (Kant, 1785, p. 7). One can characterize the ‘reason within’ as the condition which enables the moral subject to become open to the rest of the world and thus to the points of view of other moral subjects. All the contractarian theories, which in Sen’s eyes belong to the transcendental tradition, are based on the hypothesis of such a ‘reason within’ — this, for instance, is at the heart of the well-known hypothetical scenarios introduced by Rousseau and Rawls. The contractarian approach necessarily assumes that individuals are able to work in favor of the general interest or the “general will” since the ‘reason within’ is to be found in them all (or rather, we might say, they are all the seats of the ‘reason within’). Second, we emphasize the similarity between the concept of ‘reason without’ and Sen’s comparative approach. Indeed, the mere fact that the existence of a condition renders something possible does not mean that the condition is thereby effective in itself; and in the present context we note that subjects will tend to run away from the impartial spectator’s stare and take refuge in the security and moral comfort of their “natural station”. In other words, the ‘reason within’ remains so to speak asleep inside the individual. This is why a ‘reason without’ must irrupt in our world in order to stimulate, awaken, and reactivate our ‘reason within’. Sen’s comparative approach focuses precisely on how the so-called ‘reason without’, i.e. Smith’s real spectator, intervenes in the world of moral subjects and reveals certain unknown human realities to them. Sen says: “Smith invoked the reflective device of the impartial spectator to go beyond reasoning that may — perhaps imperceptibly — be constrained by local conventions of thought, and to examine deliberately, as a procedure, what the accepted conventions would look like from the perspective of a ‘spectator’ at a distance” (Sen, 2009, p.125). According to Sen, the interventions of the Smithian real spectator allow moral subjects to make progress in the comparison of social states when the question of social justice is at stake. In brief, our paper first focuses on the interactions between the ‘reason within’ and the ‘reason without’ — or, as Sen would put it, between the transcendental and the comparative approaches. Then, in a second time, we will focus on the links between these interactions and the concept of virtue. As stressed above, the individual can open himself to the reality of the other, and can reach a position of impartiality regarding his “natural station” in so far as the other awakens the impartial spectator within the individual. The ‘reason without’ must encourage and invite the individual to make use of his ‘reason within’. But the individual must be ready to hear and accept this invitation. According to Michel Foucault, the individual must “work on himself” to become receptive to the other’s voice (Foucault, 1976). Hence the issue of the interactions between the ‘reason within’ and the ‘reason without’ can be seen as a permanent feedback (back and forth) between the former and the latter. But is this permanent feedback, this “work on himself” can be seen as virtuous? Do the interactions between the ‘reason within’ and the ‘reason without’ allow men to become better, to become virtuous? And finally, what are the links between virtue and justice in the context of these interactions? Here are the questions we will address in the second time of our study. References Foucault, M. (1976), L’Histoire de la sexualité I. La volonté de savoir, Gallimard. Kant, I., (1785). Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft, 1974. Sen, A. K., (2009), The Idea of Justice, Harvard University Press. Smith, A. (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Cambridge University Press, 2005.
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