conceptual uncertainty for the previously highly relevant distinctions within gender, ethnicity, age and culture, but also operates backwards for the purposes of historical judgments and subsequent learning, and forwards for the purposes of relevance and applicability, in time, is impossible. Prima facie , it is clear it would be dissatisfactory to advocates of animal “rights”, such as Peter Singer, and wholly alien to the subjects of many parochial and charismatic authoritarian regimes globally, who, although one can speculate on their objective reaction if removed from their present circumstances, seem to proceed on a relatively amicable relationship to an entity that denies that they are even individually distinguishable or important, much less the possessor of rights 148 . Thus, Nozick and much of the liberal contractualist tradition, falls foul of the fallacy of “transcendental institutionalism”, or the search for a practical reality within a hypothetical, and implausible, ideal, identified by Amartya Sen, who observed that “[i]f a theory of justice is to guide reasoned choice of policies, strategies or institutions, then the identification of fully just social arrangements is neither necessary nor sufficient.” 149
148 Singer, P., Practical Ethics at http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp- content/uploads/Peter-Singer-Practical-Ethics-2nd-edition.pdf , p. 55, retrieved 19/04/2016 at 14:50 p.m. 149 Sen, A., The Idea of Justice , Allen Lane, London, 2009, p.15.
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