LISTSERV FILENAME: MILLARD WALTERS LISTSERV LOCATION: Listserv@acadvm1.uottawa.ca FTP FILENAME: sharing-without-reckoning-review.txt FTP LOCATION: panda1.uottawa.ca directory /pub/religion/ _______________________________________________________________ The Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS REVIEW - FULL TEXT: _Sharing Without Reckoning_ _______________________________________________________________ Volume 2.010A ISSN 1188-5734 _______________________________________________________________ April 13, 1993 Schumaker, Millard. _Sharing Without Reckoning: Imperfect Right and the Norms of Reciprocity_. Editions SR, Vol.14. Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion/Corporation Canadienne des Science Religieuses: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1992, xiv + 112pp. Reviewed by Gregory J. Walters, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Ethics, Faculty of Theology Saint Paul University/Universite Saint-Paul Ottawa, Ont. K1S 1C4 GWALTERS@ACADVM1.UOTTAWA.CA ABSTRACT This work re-examines and clarifies the distinction between perfect and imperfect rights and duties, drawing upon jurisprudential, philosophical and religious material from Classical times until the present. The author argues that the attempt to settle interpersonal and social disputes by means of law alone results from contemporary efforts to fit right, duty, obligation, and even responsibility into the doctrine of perfect rights and duties, thus neglecting earlier notions of imperfect rights and duties as well as norms of generalized reciprocity. Such neglect results from a desire to eliminate the qualitative in favor of a quantitative mode of thinking in our present historical situation, and is both unnecessary and unwise. By means of an historical retrieval of the notions of imperfect right and reciprocity, the author goes far toward bandaging, without entirely healing, the fractures of liberal democratic society characterized by the proliferation of rights rhetoric. Chapter One explores the "Mare's Nest" of historical confusions surrounding the notion of imperfect obligation. Chapter Two treats the role of generalized reciprocity as favors and counter- favors that occur under the rubric of friendship and voluntary cooperation, and as contrasted with actions done in accordance with strict duty or balanced reciprocity. Chapter Three studies Kant's doctrines of imperfect duty and supererogation, and argues Kant's sensitivity to the claims of imperfect obligation and the morally significant limitations of human character. Chapter Four attempts to correlate imperfect duties with imperfect rights, drawing a sharp distinction between imperfect duty and supererogation, and transforming the _quid pro quo_ of balanced reciprocity and strict justice into a generalized reciprocity that is less demeaning to the human spirit. The author reminds us that it is impossible to do one's duty without sometimes going beyond duty, that authentic justice between persons requires reciprocity, including the norms of trust, honour, mutual esteem, concern, liberality, grace, altruism, and friendship. This volume provides a valuable reminder in an age dominated by balanced reciprocity and legal right. As a society, we may yet avoid becoming a "nation of shopkeepers" (Napoleon), but, I suspect, something more akin to the idea of grace/gift than the idea of imperfect right will be needed. Includes a Reference List and a Short, Select Bibliography and combined subject and author index. 1. Chapter One explores the "Mare's Nest" of confusions surrounding the notion of imperfect obligation taking as its point of departure the explanatory survey of T.D. Campbell, "Perfect and Imperfect Obligations," _The Modern Schoolman_, 52 (1975):285-294. Imperfect rights and duties are precisely those which are _not_ perfected, and thus lack in some character of absolute or perfect obligation. The idea of imperfect obligation covers an historical array of terms to describe imperfect rights and duties. S's survey of selected Western moral and legal thought reveals three species of imperfect rights and duties-- i.e., inchoate, truncated, and indefinite. The tradition of inchoate obligation refers to duties that are imperfect because they are mere approximations. Inchoate duty has roots in the Stoics' notion of living according to nature, particularly in the thought of Panaetius of Rhodes (c.185-110 BCE), and in Cicero's notion of the _officia media_ (which constitute the subject matter of _De officiis_) as an interim ethic of growth and compromise within the ideal of reason. Whereas perfect duty is universal and absolute, imperfect duty is personal and relative. S traces the history of the idea of inchoate duty from Cicero to Ambrose (_De officiis ministrorum_), to the Scholastic notions of the materially and formally good, to contemporary philosophical and theological usage by H. Richard Niebuhr, Piaget, Kohlberg, and Reinhold Niebuhr. The tradition of truncated rights and duties has its origin in Roman jurisprudence, especially Ulpian's distinction between "perfect" (_lex perfecta_), "almost perfect" (_leges minus quam perfectae_), and "imperfect" laws (in _Epitome_, c.320). Perfect laws forbid certain things and provide penalties. Almost perfect laws provide penalties but do not invalidate. Imperfect laws neither stipulate nor invalidate, but merely forbid. In the modern period, nearly all law is perfect or nearly perfect, and thus the truncation of depriving moral rule of legal sanction has reduced the idea of moral law and authority. The tradition of indefinite rights and duties-- where specifications are general, vague or underdetermined-- is traced from Gaius to Aquinas to Richard Price's _Review of the Principal Questions in Morals_ (1758). Following Aristotle, S reaffirms that almost all rights and duties enunciated by philosophers and theologians are relatively indefinite or imperfect, without giving up on an objective moral order. 2. Chapter Two, "Rendre Service," treats "generalized reciprocity" as favors and counter-favors that occur under the rubric of friendship and voluntary cooperation, and which stand in contrast to actions done in accordance with strict duty. For S, generalized reciprocity _is_ "sharing without reckoning", a reciprocity quite different from the "balanced reciprocity" of the marketplace and the courts. Where generalized reciprocity takes the form of indefinite duty, the balance of service and counter-service is spread over time. Where generalized reciprocity takes the form of truncated duty, the reciprocity is based upon trust and honour and can never be enforced by direct sanction or the careful calculations of balanced reciprocity. Where generalized reciprocity takes the form of inchoate duty, it is not yet an unadulterated altruism or even a "self-sacrificial" altruism of Christian morals. The generalized reciprocity of inchoate duty moves from the pettiness of rights and strict duties to the higher morality of freely received services and counter-services. While the language of generalized reciprocity is that of claims and counter-claims, its reality is that of gift relationships. Generalized reciprocity relates partners in a covenantal relationship tied together by mutual esteem and concern, whereas balanced reciprocity represents a contractual relationship where individuals hope to achieve mutual gain. A society which lacks generalized reciprocity lacks loyalty, fidelity, and mutual concern that are served and protected by the notion of covenant. While S does not want to live in a society devoid of contractual relationships, he is rightly concerned with the loss of a sense of covenant today. 3. Chapter Three takes up the notion of imperfect right and the question of whether or not a doctrine of supererogation is possible in "The Case of Kant." S traces Kant's thinking from his _Lectures on Ethics_ (1775-81), to the _Groundwork_ (1785), to the _Metaphysic of Morals_ (1797). In the latter text, Kant suggests that a perfect duty entails a narrow obligation, while an imperfect duty entails a wider obligation, latitude, or what S calls an "indefinite duty." Moral duties are usually imperfect and of wide obligation because duties to the perfection of self and the happiness of others entail a certain latitude. Indeed, S equates Kant's position with the inchoate, imperfect duties of the Stoics, as well as tantamount to Adam Smith's analogy in his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_ that the rules governing imperfect duty are like those which govern style in composition; namely, the rule are so vague and general as not to allow for infallible guidance (p.48). Kant's imperfect obligation allows for exceptions because the inclinations-- i.e., interests, abilities, and character-- must be taken into consideration. And yet, Kant's ethics cannot accommodate the imperfect rights and duties that arise in the context of reciprocal altruism and friendship because of the loss of autonomy implied by generalized reciprocity and his inability to accept the idea of grace. As S notes, Kant's tendency is "to convert whenever possible the insecure and problematic relationships of generalized reciprocity to the safer and more manageable relationships of balanced reciprocity....a function of his clearly bourgeois ethic, which is closely modelled on the credits and debits of the marketplace; it is the very antithesis of the spirit of the gift, the spirit of sharing without reckoning" (p.53). Is, then, Kant a supererogatorian? S answers no, since Kant's system gives moral worth only to acts done for the sake of duty. 4. Chapter Four, "No Mean Morality," attempts to correlate imperfect rights and duties (inchoate, truncated, and indefinite) in an effort to show why the morality of strict justice, taken alone, is indeed a mean morality. S acknowledges the difficulty of correlating imperfect duties and rights (particularly after J.S. Mill's writings on the subject), since only legal (perfect) duties and rights have a definite formulation and enforceability. Indefinite right is correlated with imperfect duty in the following way: "if Smith owes Jones ten dollars, then Jones has a perfect right to the money since Smith's duty is a definite one; but if Smith is bound in duty to treat people kindly, then Jones has an imperfect right to that kindness-- for in this case it seems rather clear that the duty could not but be indefinite. In the case of indefinite rights we know in general what we have a right to receive just as we know in general what others are required to do; but because that knowledge cannot be brought to precise definition, we cannot know exactly in what our rights consist" (p.62). S wishes to situate the notion of imperfect obligation within a broad construal of justice that includes all wrongful injury. Contra Mill, he argues that justice and benevolence cannot be so easily separated. Just because benevolence is a duty of only imperfect obligation, it does not follow that benevolence confers no rights on anyone. Contra Kant, he argues that the non-performance of imperfect duties does indeed impute guilt and an injustice. Because perfect or imperfect duties are correlated with rights, it is wrong to violate such duties. With respect to the relation between imperfect duty and supererogation, S argues that it is not wrong to decline supererogatory acts because they are not duties. 5. Finally, S draws upon the work of Iradell Jenkins (_Social Order and the Limits of Law: A Theoretical Essay_, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980) to suggest why it is the case that not everything entailed by justice (especially, Rawls's "justice as fairness")-- and claimed as a "right"-- can be the subject of legal enactment. Central to Jenkins's analysis is his distinction between "traditional rights" and "new rights." Traditional rights are those protected by the American Bill of Rights, and include freedom of speech and religion, the right to assemble, guarantees of due process, the security of person and property, etc. They apply to each and every person and guarantee freedom _from_ this or that evil. In contrast, new rights refer to the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) championing of rights to food, housing, minimum income, health care, etc. These new rights make a claim _to_ a particular benefit, tend to attach themselves to special classes and groups, and give rise to governmental duties that are positive and stringent. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is closer to both the UDHR and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789) than the American Bill of Rights, but the Charter guarantees both sorts of rights. The point S wishes to draw here is that traditional rights embody the characteristics of perfect obligation, whereas the new rights embody the characteristics of imperfect obligation. His study of imperfect rights and duties is an important step in transforming the _quid pro quo_ of balanced reciprocity and strict justice into a generalized reciprocity that is less demeaning to the human spirit. 6. _Sharing Without Reckoning_ is remarkable for its historical synthesis of approaches to imperfect duties and rights. The book reflects the culmination of the author's research over a period of fifteen years. The book is clearly written, and is sprinkled with humour, e.g., "human virtue is something like the Canadian dollar" (p.50), meaning that we are better off with the small change of virtue than no money at all! Whether S succeeds in correlating indefinite and truncated duties with imperfect rights stands or falls on his broad construal of justice and definition of imperfect right as inextricably tied to norms of liberality and honour and not simply an ethic of absolute fairness backed by the force of law. S is swimming against a strong tide of rights theorists here, especially since John Stuart Mill defined imperfect obligations as moral obligations which do _not_ give birth to any right. For Mill, rights simply do not correlate with imperfect duties. Philosophical definitions of rights generally attempt to capture the way the term is used in jurisprudential, philosophical, and religious writing and discourse, and the author has been more than fair, if too brief at times, in presenting the dominant moral and juridical traditions. Even if one does not accept his correlation between imperfect duty and an imperfect "right," his study helps explain and cast light on the dominant tradition of perfect rights and duties. 7. I accept S's argument for the meaningfulness of imperfect right because I accept his concern for generalized reciprocity and also work within an ethical framework wherein justice will always be interpreted as the minimal shape of Christian love, and wherein hope is the theological virtue that challenges any merely secular conception of reason or rights. I am almost certain, however, that most contemporary rights theorists would reject S's argument for an imperfect "right." Whether cast in the form of rights as "interests" (Joseph Raz), binding "claims" (Joel Feinberg), or political "trumps" (Ronald Dworkin), the dominant rights discourse correlates only perfect duties with rights. It must be stressed that S does not want to live in a society devoid of contractual, legal relationships governed by the canons of fairness and justice. Indeed he does. But he also reminds us that it is impossible to do one's duty without sometimes going beyond duty, that authentic justice between persons requires reciprocity, including the norms of trust, honour, mutual esteem, concern, liberality, grace, altruism, and friendship. _Sharing Without Reckoning_, then, utters a valuable reminder in an age dominated by balanced reciprocity and legal right. As a society, we may yet avoid becoming a "nation of shopkeepers" (Napoleon), but, I suspect that what is needed is a stronger emphasis on social duty and something more akin to the language of grace or gift than the language of right, whether perfect or imperfect. ______________________________________________________________________ The Religious Studies Publications Journal - CONTENTS is an electronic journal that archives and disseminates research and pedagogical material of relevance to Religious Studies. Its goal is to provide free FTP and LISTSERV archiving of quality scholarly material and to also provide a comprehensive directory of network accessible resources for Religious Studies in a wide variety of mediums. Electronic subscriptions are free: to subscribe, send a mail message to Listserv@uottawa or listserv@acadvm1.uottawa.ca with the text: SUBSCRIBE CONTENTS your name. 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