Is the ‘ought-implies-can’ principle plausible and can it justify the thought that we never have duties to work toward improving what is currently unfeasible because infeasibility rules out injustice? Or, put differently, does it matter for our thinking about morality that we cannot fully change certain states of affairs that are detrimental to people? This thesis, as well, has come under attack.
While philosophers who invoke the ‘ought-implies-can’ requirement normally try to object to goals that are impossible to achieve for any person, on one interpretation of this demand the rule has an unwelcome, relativistic consequence. It certainly makes sense to gear the rules that regulate our social practices toward what we are capable of doing. Otherwise such rules could not be followed, which would defeat the very purpose of formulating these instructions and they would be “an intolerable burden on liberty.”4 1 2 But, as G. A. Cohen explains, such “rules of regulation”4 1 3 (that is to say: practical rules we adopt to regulate our interactions in light of what we can expect people to be able to do4 1 4) do not state or incorporate themselves what would be ideally morally desirable or just. The necessary control of our on-going interactions and the formulation of optimal moral goals (what Cohen calls the “normative ultimate”4 1 5) are really two separate things.
41 2 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 208.
41 3 G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice & Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harv ard University Press, 2008),
p. 253.
41 4 See also G. A. Cohen, ibid., p. 27 6. 41 5 G. A. Cohen, ibid., p. 251.
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The relativistic reading of ‘ought-implies-can’, in contrast, runs together two aspects: (1) what we think should ideally be the case, and (2) what rules we can expect people to conform with. James offers a clear example of this kind of confusion when he argues that “if the human condition as we know it (on some or any plausible specification) precludes the achievement of one of our favoured ideals, the realist asks us to conclude not that the world is tragically unjust, but that the favoured ideal cannot be justice.”4 1 6
But our aspirations of what is desirable are precisely not constrained by our physical capacities. It always seems possible for us to imagine a way in which things could be better. According to a weaker interpretation of the ‘ought- implies-can’ requirement, such idealized notions are of practical importance for our moral thinking. This might seem contradictory when we know that our idealized goals are not realizable for us. But there are a number of examples that show that there is nothing inconsistent in the thought that unattainable ideals can be of practical relevance to us.
The probably most striking case in defence of the importance of unrealizable moral goals is presented by Christiano. He points out that if our actual capacities would determine what can be regrettable or not regrettable then a mistaken legal verdict would be merely technically inaccurate – but not regrettable. “We know that even the best penal system is likely to convict some innocent persons and let some guilty persons go free.”4 1 7 In such cases almost all of us will not notice the mistake or else we would try to correct such legal errors. However, there is at least one person who – if the relativistic sense of ‘ought implies-can’ would be correct – would have to accept an absurd conclusion.
41 6 Aaron James, “Equality in a Realistic Utopia”, p. 7 03.
41 7 Thomas Christiano, The Constitution of Equality. Democratic Authority and its Limits
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Imagine you know you are innocent but are wrongly convicted of a crime by a juridical system that works as well as humans can achieve. If Anderson and James would be correct then you would have to believe that this verdict is indeed not only ‘not regrettable’ for you. Given that the verdict is to determine what is just you would also have to accept the mistaken verdict to be a just one and that justice has been done to you. This, though, seems to deprive the term justice of all of the content we normally attribute to it. This thought has at least the following practical implication: if we accept that punishing the innocent is unjust we have a strong duty to put a lot of efforts into not punishing the innocent – even if we know this is something impossible to always achieve. If it would be otherwise it would be hard to claim for us that justice is important or that it matters whether we achieve it in our judgment.
Another example Christiano offers to reveal the implausibility of the relativistic version of ‘ought-implies-can’ is cases of lumpy goods. In such a situation two persons equally contribute to the production of two unequal goods with the result that one of them gets the bigger good and thus more for her work than the other one.4 1 8 If our actual capacities really would limit what can be just or unjust, in case we are the person receiving the less valuable good, we could not think that there is something morally regrettable or inappropriate about this necessarily unequal distribution. Again, the strong sense of the requirement pushes us toward a counter-intuitive result.
As these cases demonstrate, moral ideals can be of practical relevance even if we are unable to completely realize them. A relativistic notion of ‘ought-implies- can’ and an interpretation that allows for unfeasible goals of justice both include the thesis that there are things that we cannot achieve and that it does not make
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sense to design rules that command us to make futile efforts toward realizing such ends. However, while sharing this idea the two interpretations arrive at fundamentally different conclusions about morality and the world. Given the counter-intuitive implications of the relativistic sense of the rule, philosophers like Christiano hold that the requirement can establish at most that
blameworthiness and injustice come apart: no one might be at fault for an injustice that exists or could not be prevented from coming about. What also comes apart on the non-relativist sense of ‘ought-implies-can’ are the ideas of
duty and injustice: our actual capacities naturally influence what duties we can have and what can be our fault. What our human capacities do not influence, though, is what we can think to be ideally just or desirable. Thus, contrary to Rawls’s, Anderson’s and James’s arguments it can make sense for us to regard detrimental natural inequalities as unjust or regrettable – even if we cannot be thought to have obligations to change these states as such duties would have to be futile. This amounts to a rejection of the relativistic sense of the ‘ought- implies-can’ requirement and the role practice-dependent accounts of morality assign to it: the rule cannot limit the scope of ideal justice.4 1 9
The fact that the first two objections of interactionist philosophers against the idea of the global scope of justice fail has an important consequence. Since allowing harm is in principle not less bad than doing harm and since what is just is not limited by our actual capacities, natural states of affairs, and not merely human interferences with nature, are subject to considerations of justice. If some aspect about the world is such that it is bad for people, who did not do
41 9 For a further discussion of the different interpretations of ‘ought implies can’ see See Robert
Stern, “Does ‘Ought’ Imply ‘Can’? And Did Kant Think It Does?”, Utilitas 16(1) (2004): pp. 42-61.
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anything to deserve to suffer from it, then we are faced with injustice, no matter whether its causes are natural or man-made.