Raz on the Social Dependence of Values
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- Journal of Moral Philosophy [ 1740-4681 ] ; 2006.
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<p>Raz on the Social Dependence of Values H ANOCH S HEINMAN * Department of Philosophy Rice University Houston, Texas 77005, USA sheinman@rice.edu Joseph Raz, The Practice of Value , with Christine Krosgaard, Robert Pippin and Bernard Williams, edited by R. Jay Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 161 pp. ISBN 0199261474 (hbk). Hardback/Paperback. £17.99/–. he book consists of Raz’s 2001 Berkeley Tanner Lectures on Human Values, commentaries by Korsgaard, Pippin and Williams, and Raz’s reply. The lectures draw on themes Raz develops in greater detail in Engaging Reason: On the Theory of Value and Action (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) ( ER ). They present a picture in which values are socially dependent but not relative. Raz’s discussion is ambitious and illuminating. The commen- taries and reply are trenchant. On the whole, the book is an excellent instance of its genre. Raz is not concerned with which values there are, but with explaining (intrinsic) values and their relation to social practices (pp. 121, 124). The main focus of the lectures is cultural values: ‘the values of products of cul- tural activities’ (p. 29), ‘values people need to know at least something about and to pursue in order for there to be objects with those values’ (p. 33). Raz’s favourite example is the value of opera (pp. 30-32). Raz’s ‘ special social dependence thesis claims that some values exist only if there are (or were) social practices sustaining them. The (general) social depend- ence thesis claims that, with some exceptions, all values depend on social practices either by being subject to the special thesis or through their depend- ence on values that are subject to the special thesis’ (p. 19). Here I will focus on the special social dependent thesis (SDT) and the values to which it primarily applies—the cultural values. Raz stresses that SDT is neither reductivist nor politically conservative. There is no evaluation-free way to tell true values from false (pp. 23-24). ‘The existence of a sustaining practice is merely a necessary, not a sufficient * This review benefited from the excellent discussions of HEDONS (Houston Ethical Discussions of New(ish) Stuff) during the spring of 2005. Special thanks to Alastair Norcross for valuable comments on an earlier draft. T Journal of Moral Philosophy © 2006 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi http://MPJ.sagepub.com Vol 3(1): 77-87 DOI: 10.1177/1740468106063284</p>
<p>78 J OURNAL OF M ORAL P HILOSOPHY 3.1 (2006) condition for the existence of some kind of values. [SDT] does not in any way privilege the point of view of any group or culture. It allows one full recourse to the whole of one’s conceptual armoury, information, and powers of argumentation in reaching conclusions as to which practices sustain goods and which sustain evil, or worthless things, which are, perhaps, taken to be good by a population’ (p. 25). SDT is not ‘conventionalism’—it is not the normative thesis that we should affirm social practices simply because others value them. It is ‘a metaphysical thesis, about a necessary condition for the existence of (some) values’ (p. 26; cf. p. 127). A natural way to cash out the claim that value V depends on practice P for its existence is to say that V would exist at time t only if P did. It is a striking feature of Raz’s position that he denies this. For all that SDT says, V could exist now even if P did not. ‘The thesis is that the existence of values depends on the existence of sustaining practices at some point, not that these prac- tices must persist as long as the value does’ (p. 21). Once the values ‘come into being, they remain in existence even if the sustaining practices die out’ (p. 22; cf. pp. 135, 152). ‘The asymmetry between initial emergence and continued existence lies at the root of [SDT]’ (p. 22). Raz intends SDT to capture an intuitive sense in which cultural and other values depend on contingent social practices without espousing ‘social relativism’, the view ‘that the merit or demerit of actions and other objects of evaluation is relative to the society in which they take place or in which they are judged’ (p. 16). Relativism conflicts with commonsense morality. ‘We take some of our views to be true absolutely, and not qualified by being rela- tive to a perspective’ (p. 18; cf. p. 45). Moreover, by confining the validity of values to particular times, places, or perspective, relativism relinquishes the ‘resources for criticizing the evaluative beliefs of other societies’ (p. 44; for Raz’s critique of social relativism, see ER , ch. 7). Raz’s explanation of the difference between SDT and relativism appeals to a distinction between the existence of values and their application (or validity). ‘Unlike social relativism, [SDT] does not hold that social practices limit the application or validity of values. The test of whether something is valuable or not is in argument, using the full range of concepts, information, and rules of inference at our disposal’ (p. 44). ‘[S]ustaining social practices constitute emergence conditions, and not—as they do according to standard social relativism—application or validity conditions’ (p. 135). In a crucial yet enigmatic passage Raz disavows the ‘suggestion that what is of value is so only in societies where the value is appreciated’ and declares: ‘Once a value comes into being, it bears on everything, without restriction’ (p. 22). Raz also distinguishes between the existence of values and access to them— the ability to appreciate or engage with values. Since this ability requires the possession of culture-specific concepts, access to values is clearly socially dependent. But SDT is stronger than the social dependence of access thesis: it entails that some values and their attendant excellences would not even exist were they never sustained by some social practice (pp. 29-30). At the</p>
<p>S HEINMAN Raz on the Social Dependence of Values 79 same time, once a value is created by social practices, it continues to exist even if we lose access to it. The value of opera is a socially dependent value, as the practices that sustain it might have never existed. But since they do, the value will continue to exist even if these practices cease to exist and are forgotten. (Notice Raz’s controversial assumption that values whose sustain- ing practices have become forgotten are inaccessible. After all, people can have the practices and concepts available on record. A clearer case of inac- cessibility is one in which the sustaining practices have disappeared without leaving as much as a causally related trace. In this case, should we say that the value has ceased to exist or merely that it is inaccessible?) Raz thinks that SDT accounts for the ‘common belief that there is no point to value without valuers’. ‘That an object has value can have an impact on how things are in the world only through being recognized.’ Only then can people appropriately respond to values, by respecting them and engaging with them. ‘Absent that possibility, the objects [of value] may exist, and they may be of value, but there is not much point to that’ (p. 28). Finally, related to the social dependence of values is their genre-dependence . The concept of a genre or kind of value ‘defines which objects belong to it, and in doing so it determines that the value of the object is to be assessed ( inter alia ) by its relations to the defining standards of the genre’. The gist of genre-dependence is a two-stage process of evaluation: we first identify the object as a member of some kind of good and then judge it good to the extent that it is good of its kind (pp. 39-40, 138). Genre-dependence does not collapse into relativism. Raz’s view allows for ‘detachment’, namely ‘for transition from good of a kind to good, while retaining the umbilical cord to one’s kind as the ground for the detached judgment’ (p. 41). If a certain work ‘is a good instance of its genre, then it is a good work absolutely, not only good of its kind’. It is good absolutely ‘because it is good by the standards of its genre. While the verdict (good, bad, or mediocre) is unrestricted, its ground is always relative to a particular genre’ (pp. 45-46). *** Unlike Korsgaard and Williams, I am comfortable enough with Raz’s talk of values existing. I also think I understand what he means by ‘values’, at least in broad terms. The value of a valuable object is neither that object itself nor the properties in virtue of which it is valuable. It is, in Korsgaard’s terms, the valuableness the object has in virtue of these properties (p. 67). In Raz’s terms: ‘Values are what those that possess the evaluative properties have in virtue of their possession’ (p. 129). But what is it for a value to exist ? This is important, because SDT is about the social dependence of the existence of values. Raz takes pains to distinguish the existence of values from their application (or validity) and from their accessibility . A value can exist without applying to anything and without anyone having access to it. What is it for a value to exist unapplied and inaccessible?</p>
<p>80 J OURNAL OF M ORAL P HILOSOPHY 3.1 (2006) One possibility is that values are entities, but a mystifying metaphysics is clearly not what Raz has in mind. Nor does talk of values existing necessitate the postulation of superlative facts. More plausible is to say that a value consists simply of the fact that a certain conditional proposition is necessarily true. To preserve Raz’s sensible non-reductivism—his insistence that values can only be explained in terms of other normative concepts—we must only make sure the conditional employs normative concepts (at least in its con- sequent). Here’s a general proposal: to say of a cultural value that it exists is to say that, necessarily, engaging in certain activities would be valuable if certain favourable cultural conditions obtained. Applied to Raz’s favourite example: to say that the value of opera exists is to say that, necessarily, engag- ing with opera would be valuable if the social practices that make opera- engaging activities possible or viable were in place. The trouble is that the proposal threatens to falsify SDT. It is entirely reasonable to assert that writing, singing, or listening to opera would be valuable if the social practices that make such activities possible or viable were in place. But it seems that if that conditional is true at all, it is neces- sarily true. If it is true now, it was true before opera-sustaining practices emerged—in fact, it would be true even if such practices never existed. Under the proposal, this implies that the value of opera has always existed. Since this contradicts Raz’s claim that the value of opera depends on social prac- tice for its emergence, he must reject the proposal. So what is his alternative conception of the existence of values? Perhaps this. To say that the value of opera exists is to assert both that (1) necessarily, engaging with opera would be valuable if the social practices that make opera-engaging activities possible or viable were in place, and that (2) these social practices are in fact in place. This proposal vindicates SDT’s implication that the value of opera would never come into existence in the absence of some opera-sustaining practices. Alas, it implies that the value of opera cannot exist unless its sustaining practices do. And this contradicts Raz’s interpretation of SDT, in which the value of opera might survive its sustaining practices. Finally we come to a version of the proposal that mirrors SDT. To say that the value of opera exists is to assert both that (1) necessarily, engaging with opera would be valuable if the social practices that make opera-engaging activi- ties possible or viable were in place, and that (2) these social practices either exist or existed . This final proposal strikes me as implausible. First, both this and the previous proposal seem to ignore the distinction between valuable operas and the value of opera. While it is trivially true that valuable operas did not exist before the emergence of opera-sustaining practices, it is not at all obvious that the value of opera did not exist then. It seems clear, for example, that had the practices that make opera possible or viable existed in Ancient Greece, it would have been valuable for Socrates to go to the opera. In a natural sense, this implies that the value of opera had existed before the emergence of opera.</p>
<p>S HEINMAN Raz on the Social Dependence of Values 81 Raz could reply as follows: ‘It is difficult to deny that opera (the art form) is a historical product that came into being during an identifiable period of time, and did not exist before that. It is therefore also natural to think that the excellences [that constitute the value] of operas ... depend on the very same social practices on which the existence of opera’ depends (pp. 30-31). Perhaps so. But it is also natural to resist the inference from the first and undeniable claim to the second. In a perfectly natural sense, the standards constituting the value of opera do not depend on the existence of opera: necessarily, it would be good to meet them if the right social conditions obtained. *** But the main problem with the proposal—and hence with SDT—does not depend on the plausibility of thinking that the value of opera existed before Monteverdi. The main problem is the mysterious temporal asymmetry the proposal postulates between the existence of values and the existence of the practices that sustain them. Arguably, the claim that the value of opera is socially dependent owes its appeal to the perceived pointlessness of talking about it existing where opera itself cannot be valuable because it is non- existent. Yet this rationale applies whenever opera does not exist—even if it once existed. To generalize, it is arguable that cultural values depend on practices for their emergence because it is pointless to talk about values existing under unfavourable conditions in which they cannot be meaning- fully practiced, appreciated or accessed by anyone. But this is equally a rea- son to believe that cultural values depend on practices for the persistence . There is an obvious sense in which opera could not exist, let alone be viable, in Athens—the historical and cultural conditions were far from ripe. In that sense, opera could not be practiced, appreciated or accessed—and so could not be valuable—in Athens. And this is why it might be thought point- less to talk about the value of opera existing there. But the exact same con- sideration applies to some cases in which the sustaining practices have long ceased to exist. There are possibly forms of ancient art or culture that had gone extinct before they could leave us a causally related trace. All the evi- dence of their existence has been destroyed. There is an obvious sense in which we will never be able to know about, let alone appreciate or practice, these bygone art forms. If it is pointless to talk about the value of opera as something that existed in Athens, why is it not also pointless to talk about the value of these long gone and traceless forms of art as existing today—or indeed about the value of opera existing in a possible future world in which it will have been epistemically inaccessible? Perhaps because unlike the Greek, who could not possibly rediscover opera, we can still rediscover the ancient forms of art, and our remote descendents will be able to rediscover opera should it disappear. This line of response is suggested by Raz’s comment that values that survive their sustaining prac- tices ‘can be known even if exclusively from records. They can get forgotten and be rediscovered, and the like’ (p. 22). But this seems to place too much</p>
<p>82 J OURNAL OF M ORAL P HILOSOPHY 3.1 (2006) emphasis on a prefix or, what is more likely, equivocate on the relevant notion of possibility. Logically speaking, while opera could not be re discovered in Athens, it could certainly be discovered for the first time or created. Had the right historical and cultural conditions obtained, the Greek would have created opera or inherited it from the Ancient Egyptians. More relevant, of course, is the historical or cultural sense in which opera could not have emerged in Ancient Greece. But in that sense, long gone and traceless forms of art can- not be rediscovered or reinstated today, either. And opera cannot re-emerge in our imagined future world. If a practice disappears without a causally related trace, the best scientists, archaeologists and historians will never be able to discover them . Whatever they might discover will not be the original practices or values. Now Raz’s own example of a value that exists long after its sustaining practices disappeared is that of Greek tragedy (p. 22). But first, this seems to rely on an overly restrictive conception of sustaining practices. It is not obvi- ous that the practices that brought Greek tragedy into existence have disap- peared. After all, people still read, perform, and go to see Antigone and Electra. These practices have changed considerably over the years. But are they not still practices of Greek tragedy ? If so, they surely sustain the value of Greek tragedy? If, on the other hand, we suppose that they are no longer the same practices, what reason is there to believe that the present value of Greek tragedy is the same value ? (Raz says that ‘[s]ustaining practices can be identified only in normative language referring to the very values they sustain’ [pp. 23-24]. This might explain why social dependence implies nothing about which alleged values are genuine ones. But it does not explain why we should not say of some admittedly genuine value that it has van- ished along with its sustaining practice.) Second and more important, even if we accept a narrow construal of ‘sus- taining practices’, in which the practices that sustained the value of tragedy in Ancient Greece have long disappeared, they have hardly disappeared without a trace . Far from it, the modern practices of tragedy are causally related to the ancient. The record is surely there, waiting to be ‘rediscov- ered’. So Raz’s example does not speak to the problem. For either it features a value that has never really been lost or else a value that has been lost but is there to be found. Either way, the value has not ceased to exist and temporal symmetry is preserved. So my objection comes to this. SDT and Raz’s distinction between the existence of values and their accessibility might give the impression that a value that has been brought into existence by social practices might continue to exist after the practices vanish without leaving as much as a causally related trace and are no longer discoverable. Raz’s comment that a value that has survived the death of its sustaining practices can be rediscovered seems to suggest otherwise (more on this equivocation later). But this need not matter, because Raz is faced with a dilemma: either we can now (re)discover ancient forms of art that have disappeared without a causally related trace,</p>
<p>S HEINMAN Raz on the Social Dependence of Values 83 in which case the Ancient Greeks could have discovered opera after all, or else the Greek could not have discovered opera, in which case we cannot (re)discover such ancient art forms, after all. The first horn of the dilemma applies under a strictly logical interpretation of the possibility of rediscovery; the second under a cultural-historical interpretation. Neither horn sanctions the asymmetry at the root of SDT. *** I now turn to the relation between Raz’s social dependence and relativism. Both the social dependence Raz advocates and the social relativism he rejects say that values are socially dependent in the sense postulated by SDT. But relativism also makes values socially dependent in some other way. So SDT does not entail relativism. But Raz also rejects relativism. He does so by claim- ing that once a value comes into existence, ‘it bears on everything, without restriction’ (p. 22). This claim is supposed to give us the main difference between social dependence and relativism (pp. 109, 132, 134-35). But how should we read it? Williams calls attention to the fact that this claim seems to imply that existing values apply to societies in the remote past, and asks whether this in turn implies, for example, that it was a failing on the part of the Romans not to bring the values of liberal democracy into existence. Since his answer is negative, Williams finds it hard to see how existing values bear on everything without restriction (p. 113). It’s not that applying our liberal values to Ancient illiberal societies would betray a conceptual confusion. Rather, doing so ‘is simply not a very sensible thing to do’ (p. 108). Again, ‘you can be Kant at the Court of King Arthur if you want to. The question is the extent to which it is reasonable and helpful to do so’ (p. 114). Raz’s response is not easy to understand (pp. 131-38, 152). He confirms that ‘once a value exists it applies to everything, including to things that took place before it existed’ (so Williams was right to read ‘bear’ in the origi- nal formulation to mean ‘apply’?), but immediately adds: ‘If liberal values do not apply to the Court of King Arthur, this is because they do not apply universally. To be short, though crude, about it, I would say that they apply only to advanced capitalist societies’ (p. 152). It almost seems that ‘apply’ is used here in two different senses: liberal values potentially apply to every- thing but actually only to capitalist societies. We can avoid the confusion by insisting on a distinction between values bearing on and applying to things. Once a value comes into existence, it bears on everything without restriction, but its application or validity might still be restricted. But now what does it mean for values to bear on things to which they do not apply? Given the admission that their application (or validity) may well be restricted, what exactly is left of the key idea that once a value comes into existence it bears on everything without restriction? And is it still sufficient to make social dependence a viable alternative to relativism? My own tentative answer is probably not, at least when cultural and political values are concerned. Raz’s official statement of SDT hardly reveals</p>
<p>84 J OURNAL OF M ORAL P HILOSOPHY 3.1 (2006) all, or even the most important, ways in which he thinks such values are socially dependent. We have already identified one important way in which Raz seems to qualify SDT in the direction of social relativism. His comment that values whose sustaining practices have disappeared can be rediscovered seems to suggest that a value can survive its sustaining practices only because it can still be discovered. If so, the existence at some point in time of sustaining prac- tices is not a sufficient social condition for the existence of values (at t); the existence (at t) of casually related traces that guarantee the epistemic acces- sibility and discoverability of these practices is also necessary. (But perhaps the comment is not meant to qualify SDT, only to motivate it? [cf. p. 22]. Elsewhere too Raz equivocates: once a socially created good ‘has been devel- oped it remains in existence [(1)] forever ( or [(2)] for as long as it can be— should it be lost—rediscovered)’ [ ER , p. 149, emphasis added]. But as we have seen, the period during which a value can be rediscovered if lost need not last forever. So should we read the first part of the sentence with rider [1] or [2]?) If the comment introduces an additional necessary condition, then SDT may have well read: ‘some values exist only if there are (or were) epistemically accessible and discoverable social practices sustaining them’. This would massively dilute SDT’s importance and blur its difference with rela- tivism. I now wish to identify another way in which Raz’s discussion tends to water down SDT. I have in mind his discussion of how cultural and political values depend on social practices for their application or validity. Consider cultural values first. Raz’s ‘short, and dogmatically presented, answer’ to Williams begins thus: ‘Formally once a value has emerged it can apply to everything, without temporal restrictions. Many values are, however, genre specific. Only films can be judged as good or bad films, only parties as good or bad parties. Many values that are subject to [SDT] cannot apply to any- thing that happened or existed before their emergence. The value of poetry emerged with poetry, the value of marriage with the institution of marriage, and so on. Therefore, there can be neither good nor bad poems, neither good nor bad marriages before the emergence of the values by which they are judged good or bad’ (p. 136). This passage appears to contain a relatively modest point but also a significant concession. The modest point speaks to whether there could be good or bad poems before the emergence of the value of poetry. But this is not the question. Of course there could not. After all, Raz thinks the value of poetry did not emerge until the emergence of poems (or poetry-sustaining practices), and there can be no good poems in the absence of poems. The question is whether the value of poetry can apply to things that had existed long before poems appeared on the scene. The potentially significant concession is in saying that many values that are subject to SDT—presumably, all genre-specific values—‘cannot apply to anything that happened or existed before their emergence’ (emphasis added). So perhaps there is a sense in which the value of opera bears on everything</p>
<p>S HEINMAN Raz on the Social Dependence of Values 85 without restriction. But it does not apply to—or is not valid regarding— Egypt, Athens, Rome, the Middle Ages, and perhaps even the Renaissance. Is this not an obvious form of social dependence —of dependence of values on social practices? Genres are socially contingent concepts. They are constitu- ted by standards of excellence that might have been otherwise; they are what they are only because of contingent social and historical facts. Raz does not seem to think that it makes much sense to apply these standards (or take them as valid with respect) to societies and people that had existed long before they emerged. But then what sort of social in dependence is marked by saying that they bear on such societies or people? This impression as regards cultural values is reinforced by Raz’s response to Williams’s challenge concerning political values. You might expect Raz to bite the bullet and accept the implication that liberal values apply to the remote past. He could then try to account for Williams’s intuition that the Romans are not guilty of a ‘failing’ by appealing to something like the distinc- tion between the moral status of acts and the moral responsibility of agents for their actions. This would be sufficient to explain his agreement with Williams that condemning the High Middle Ages for failing to respect First Amendment values ‘is simply not a very sensible thing to do’ (p. 108; cf. p. 137). Raz could refuse to condemn the people of the Middle Ages but still condemn their acts for failing to accord with liberal values. Instead, he con- cedes that liberal values do not apply to the Middle Ages in the first place: ‘they apply only to advanced capitalist societies’ (p. 152). Like Williams, he thinks it makes little sense to apply liberal values to other societies. The important point is Raz’s explanation for this: ‘To function well, politi- cal arrangements, their institutions and principles alike, have to be suited to the social, cultural, and economic conditions of the societies they govern. Otherwise they are liable to cause more harm than good. Liberal principles and institutional arrangements would have been as counterproductive as they are unimaginable in the Middle Ages’ (p. 152). But until we know more about how to interpret this open-ended and potentially extensive social appli- cation condition, it is hard to debate it as an alternative to social relativism. To recap, Raz says that unlike relativism, SDT ‘does not hold that social practices limit the application or validity of value’. However, he acknowledges that contemporary cultural and political values often cannot apply to the remote past, and his explanation is thoroughly social. What practices exist in a society substantially limits the application or validity of such values in that society. This is not a consequence of SDT itself, to be sure. It is a conse- quence of other parts of Raz’s account, for example, his genre-specific con- ception of cultural values or the requirement that political values be suitable for the prevailing social conditions. All the same, it amounts to recognizing a potentially extensive and open-ended dependence of cultural and political values on sustaining practices. This recognition leaves the difference between Razian social dependence and social relativism substantially underspecified and elusive.</p>
<p>86 J OURNAL OF M ORAL P HILOSOPHY 3.1 (2006) *** Recall now Raz’s distinction between the existence of values and access to them. SDT is about existence, not access. But Raz also accepts as ‘relatively uncontroversial’ the thesis that access to value is socially dependent (p. 30). He takes this thesis to imply that the ‘point’ of values depends on sustaining practices. Inaccessible values cannot be recognized or engaged with and so are utterly ‘pointless’ or ‘idle’ (pp. 30, 36). But first, what exactly is the point of postulating pointless values? What point is served by talking about values bearing pointlessly on things? (Compare Raz: ‘what point can there be in the existence of values if there is no point in their instantiation in objects of value?’ [p. 29]. Incidentally, Raz claims that ‘[i]t is constitutive of values that they can be appreciated, and engaged with by valuers’, and that this supports ‘the pointlessness of values without valuers’ [p. 29, emphasis added]. If so, why does it not also support the non-existence of values without valuers?) Second, to echo Pippin’s concern (pp. 89, 94), could not the relativist reformulate his claims about values in terms of their point and still say everything he wants to say? Both Raz and the relativist accept that the value of opera exists now but did not in Athens. The only interesting question, it seems, is whether there is a point in applying it now to Athens. If Raz’s and the relativist’s answers differ, it is not clear how. Or take Raz’s distinction between a value judgment and its ‘grounds’. When he says of a value judgment about X that it is genre-dependent, he only means to say that its grounds are sensitive to X’s genre. The judgment itself (or its normative force) is ‘detached’ from its grounds and is ‘absolute’. This is why genre-based values ‘illustrate clearly the possibility of social dependence without relativism’ (p. 42). But can the genre-based grounds of a value judgment fail to affect its force? When I say that X, a novel, is good, I’m not saying that X is a good cookbook. So it might be misleading to say that X is good absolutely (and redundant to say that X is good absolutely as a novel) (cf. p. 45). In constraining the grounds for value judgments about X, it seems, X’s genre also constraints the judgment or its force. But the social relativist does not claim that value judgments have no force, only that their force is relative to social practice rather than absolute. Presumably, he could accept that, once relativized to social practice, judgments have absolute nor- mative force. The distinction between a judgment and its grounds simply leaves the difference between social dependence and relativism unspecified. Finally, what remains of the notion of values bearing on things? One possibility is suggested by Raz’s claim elsewhere that ‘once a good exists it is true for all that engaging with it is good or valuable, if only they had an opportunity to do so. This is then true even of people who existed before the sustaining practice emerged’ ( ER , pp. 190-91). So perhaps we should say that, if the value of X (e.g. opera, poetry) exists and so bears on everything, then it would be valuable for any person Y to engage with X, if only Y had an opportunity to do so. Now we have already seen that this line of analysis</p>
<p>S HEINMAN Raz on the Social Dependence of Values 87 tends to undercut the supposed temporal asymmetry of values. If it would really be valuable for everyone to engage with X if only she had an oppor- tunity to do so, then it would be valuable to do so even if no one has ever had the opportunity to do so—even if, by Raz’s existence conditions, the value of X does not exist. It is also worth noting, however, that the claim in question is exceedingly weak: why would anyone—including a social relativist—wish to deny that it would be good for the Greek to watch romantic comedies if they only had the opportunity, or that it would be good for the Romans to engage with liberal values if only the opportunity arose in Rome? Such counterfactuals seem com- patible with a natural reading of the claims Raz uses to characterize social rela- tivism: ‘the merits or demerits of actions and other objects of evaluation is relative to the society in which they take place or in which they are judged’; ‘evaluative standards…are valid only where they are practiced’; or ‘what is valuable is valuable only in societies that think that it is’ (pp. 16-18). *** Raz’s project of stirring a middle course between an objectivist account of values that ignores the plausible intuition that values are sensitive to social practice, on the one hand, and a subjectivist social relativism that fails to account for the objectivity of values and their capacity to ground cross- cultural criticism, on the other, is highly valuable. However, there are two independent reasons to resist his suggested reconciliation. First, the asym- metry SDT postulates between the existence of values and the existence of their sustaining social practices (or between the emergence and persistence of values) is implausible. Second, while the position arising from SDT together with the rest of Raz’s claims in this area does not quite collapse into relativ- ism, it also fails to articulate a clearly debatable alternative. The difficulties with Raz’s position on the social dependence of values confirm the inherent difficulty of the project.</p>
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