“Resisting Injustice” with Daniel Viehoff

What are the instrumentalists getting wrong? Why not protest injustice in whatever way works best?

Right.

So many of us think justice really matters, right? And so you might think we should do whatever it takes to bring about justice.

But then when you start thinking about what it would take to bring about justice under unjust circumstances— you start to realize it might take a lot of things that many of us would be reluctant to do.

Might require breaking the law, might require attacking our neighbors, it might require attacking cops, officials, et cetera, et cetera.

And many of us might think, yeah, even if this is what is necessary to bring about justice, there are reasons for us not to do this.

There's something that stops us from doing this.

And instrumentalists are effectively saying, no, you should do whatever it takes to bring about justice, even at the cost of these other things.

Now, they might say, Look, there are good reasons of justice not to do these things.

Perhaps it'll ultimately backfire.

There'll be a backlash if you engage in these kinds of aggressive protests.

Maybe it's going to lead to the wrong kinds of people running for office because only people are willing to run the risk of being attacked are going to run for office.

And so they'll try and find reasons within, if you will, a concern for bringing about the best outcomes to explain some of these intuitions may have against taking the most extreme steps.

But I think they'll struggle to really account for all of them.

And so in light of this, many of us will think, no, there are other things that matter to us apart from simply pursuing outcomes.

So the other view on the table is some kind of proceduralist view, according to which there are values that constrain our attempts to resist or remedy injustice.

Values like democracy or equality or respect or civility is a term that often comes up.

So maybe even if a law is unjust, even if those enforcing it are acting unjustly, we still have to treat our fellow citizens as democratic equals or appeal to their sense of justice, and that constrains what we ought to do.

What's attractive about that view, and what does that view get wrong?

So I think what makes that view attractive to many of us are two things.

So one, it really lines up with deep intuitions we have in favor of democracy.

So many of us have what you might want to call a robust commitment to democracy.

We think that it's worth living under democratic conditions, even if non-democratic arrangements might actually lead to better outcomes, better laws, better policies, et cetera.

Still, it matters to us that these laws and policies are made democratically.

And what distinguishes democracy from other arrangements are effectively procedural virtues, right? The who and how of decision-making, not the what of decision-making.