Keith Burgess-Jackson

Michael Otsuka is a bright young moral philosopher. His first book is a defense of left-libertarianism, which conjoins (in his words) “a libertarian right of self-ownership” with an “egalitarian principle of distributive justice.” You might think that, since his theory is a hybrid of libertarianism and egalitarianism, Otsuka would be sympathetic to both. In fact, he is scornful of libertarianism. Here is a passage from the penultimate page of his essay “Self-Ownership and Equality: A Lockean Reconciliation” (Philosophy & Public Affairs 27 [winter 1998]: 65-92):

The incompatibility of equality with such giving and sharing poses an enormous problem for egalitarianism. Whether it also poses a problem for my project of reconciling libertarian self-ownership and equality turns on the question of whether the second of the two rights of libertarian self-ownership (the right to all of the income one can gain from one’s mind and body, including one’s labor) implies a right to give away or share one’s income. If, as many would no doubt insist, it does, then I will have shown self-ownership and equality to be compatible only outside of a context that includes nonmarket giving and sharing. This would be a serious concession to those who deem self-ownership to be incompatible with equality. Nevertheless, I will have shown that a libertarian right of self-ownership does not make the world safe for selfishness unbridled by the constraints of equality even if it does make the world safe for a certain amount of altruism unbridled by these constraints. Libertarians should not be happy with this result, since they are interested in more than the right to be altruistic. They are also interested in the right to line their own pockets. (p. 91; footnote omitted)

The final sentence is nothing more (or less) than a snide comment on the alleged motives of libertarians. As such, it has no place in a scholarly essay. Otsuka is implying that libertarians are unprincipled. The reason they defend libertarianism is not that they believe it’s the correct theory of justice; it’s that they want to line their pockets. Their arguments, therefore, are so much window dressing.

Two things. First, how does Otsuka know what motivates libertarians such as Robert Nozick? Doesn’t charity require that he impute good motives, rather than bad motives, to them? Does he not teach his students to be charitable? Charitableness is one of the things that distinguishes philosophy from politics. It is why many of us were attracted to philosophy and repelled by politics. Second, if libertarians are motivated by greed, then why aren’t egalitarians such as Otsuka motivated by envy? Why would only one side of this classic debate be improperly motivated? It’s all very strange. One suspects that Otsuka is telling egalitarians (wink, wink) that he is one of them. “Look at me,” he seems to be saying; “I can cast aspersions on libertarians just like you can. Don’t think that because I’m a left-libertarian I have any sympathy for these selfish creeps. Libertarianism is a detestable theory of justice, rooted in selfishness, and libertarians are contemptible.” Am I making too much of this? I’m trying to be charitable, but maybe I’m failing. I hesitated to write about this for several days, while I thought it over. I can’t think of an innocent explanation for the snide remark.

By the way, I’m not a libertarian. I do, however, believe in such things as intellectual honesty, charitableness, fairness, and civility.

Will Nehs, who is up way past his bedtime, sent a link to this.

If this isn’t the best album ever made, then 2 + 2 = 5.

1. The New York Yankees have a new manager. See here. I’m guessing, but perhaps the Yankees wanted someone named “Joe” to lead the team. The previous manager named “Joe” led the team to four World Series victories. But seriously, I think highly of Joe Girardi. I admired him as a player and I admire him as a person. Didn’t he have some run-ins with the owner of the Florida Marlins when he managed there? Does that bode well for him? Working for George Steinbrenner is no piece of cake.

2. You heard it here first: Alex Rodriguez and Mike Lowell switch teams. The Yankees, unleashed from the postseason dog, win the 2008 World Series.

3. Not to brag or anything, but Brian Cashman offered me the Yankees’ managerial position. He said I have the finest mind in the game today (which shows that he is an astute baseball man). I turned it down on two grounds: first, I do bike rallies on Saturdays; and second, I hate the Yankees.

4. I need to stop making baseball predictions. This past April, I predicted that my beloved Detroit Tigers would defeat the Atlanta Braves in the World Series, in six games. Ha! My only consolation is that I wasn’t alone in being way off. Here are the predictions of the five “experts” in The Dallas Morning News:

Detroit over Arizona
New York Yankees over Los Angeles
New York over Boston
Detroit over San Diego
New York Yankees over New York Mets

Early prediction for next year: Cleveland over San Diego.

Paul Krugman* thinks the Republican presidential candidates are fearmongers. He thinks the threat of terrorism is overblown. He’s certainly entitled to think this, and even to say it, but, unlike the candidates, he’s not responsible for the welfare of the American people. As I have said many times, the job of a president is to proportion people’s fear to the evidence. (Come to think of it, what’s wrong with a little extra fear, as a kind of “kicker”? Shouldn’t we err on the side of safety?) Krugman assumes that there is nothing to fear and concludes that anyone who makes people fearful is a demogogue. Won’t the American people decide whether they have reason to fear anything? Krugman might say that they can’t make this determination, since they’ve been duped by the Bush administration; but isn’t that to give the American people too little credit? How did Krugman avoid being duped? If I needed advice on something important to me and had to choose between consulting Krugman and consulting a randomly selected person on the streets of Chadron, Nebraska, I’d consult the latter. Krugman has demonstrated his dishonesty, mean-spiritedness, and bad judgment many times over. He is a reliable anti-authority.

* “Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults” (Daniel Okrent, “13 Things I Meant to Write About but Never Did,” The New York Times, 22 May 2005).

Words cannot describe this fantastic football finish. Just watch it.

Every day (or maybe it’s every weekday), a usage tip is e-mailed to me by Oxford University Press. If you’d like to subscribe (it’s free), click here. If you haven’t read Bryan Garner’s book A Dictionary of Modern American Usage (see here for a review), you don’t know what you’re missing. The second edition is entitled Garner’s Modern American Usage.

To the Editor:

Re “Dancing in the Seats,” by Daniel J. Levitin (Op-Ed, Oct. 26):

While superficially attractive, the notion of dancing during classical music concerts is destructive. How would we hear the music over the sound of the hooves of the satyrs and the cries of bacchants who dance?

Children, treated to recorded music, may dance joyfully in their schools and homes. There, may they find joy.

But after having paid $200 for a choice seat for a performance of “La Bohème,” I do not care to have a child kicking the back of my seat. Let the rude children and their parents be banished to the lobby, where they may bother each other.

Dance, dance to the music—but not in the sacred space of the orchestra or chorus, which offers live interpretations of the glories of music of the past. Must we permit clog dancing during a performance of Mozart’s Requiem?

Mr. Levitin is correct that music is inextricably entwined with dance. That’s why there are ballets, hoedowns and mosh pits.

William Barber
Missouri City, Tex., Oct. 26, 2007

Note from KBJ: Killjoy.

Here.

I teach Ethics, but that doesn’t mean I have all the answers. (Actually, it does, but play along.) I just bought 20 five-ounce Hershey bars for dispensation on Halloween, which is Wednesday. Each bar contains 800 calories. (That’s 36.3% of my daily allowance of 2,200 calories.) Am I wrong in giving these bars to trick-or-treaters, given the obesity epidemic in our society? I suppose I could append a note to each bar, saying something like, “Just because I gave you this chocolate bar doesn’t mean you should eat it all at once; you should break it into pieces and eat one small piece per day until it’s gone.” What do you think? Am I contributing to the obesity of minors?

Here.

A good ass-kicking
Is what the Red Sox deserved
Instead, they gave one