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Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World
A trenchant defense of hierarchy in different spheres of our lives, from the personal to the political
All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well as other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste.
Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past.
A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms.
All complex and large-scale societies are organized along certain hierarchies, but the concept of hierarchy has become almost taboo in the modern world. Just Hierarchy contends that this stigma is a mistake. In fact, as Daniel Bell and Wang Pei show, it is neither possible nor advisable to do away with social hierarchies. Drawing their arguments from Chinese thought and culture as well as other philosophies and traditions, Bell and Wang ask which forms of hierarchy are justified and how these can serve morally desirable goals. They look at ways of promoting just forms of hierarchy while minimizing the influence of unjust ones, such as those based on race, sex, or caste.
Which hierarchical relations are morally justified and why? Bell and Wang argue that it depends on the nature of the social relation and context. Different hierarchical principles ought to govern different kinds of social relations: what justifies hierarchy among intimates is different from what justifies hierarchy among citizens, countries, humans and animals, and humans and intelligent machines. Morally justified hierarchies can and should govern different spheres of our social lives, though these will be very different from the unjust hierarchies that have governed us in the past.
A vigorous, systematic defense of hierarchy in the modern world, Just Hierarchy examines how hierarchical social relations can have a useful purpose, not only in personal domains but also in larger political realms.
285 pages, Hardcover
Published February 18, 2020
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174 people want to read
About the author
Daniel A. Bell
33 books31 followersDaniel A. Bell is Chair Professor of the Schwarzman Scholar Program at Tsinghua University in Beijing and director of the Berggruen Institute of Philosophy and Culture. He was born in Montreal, educated at McGill and Oxford, has taught in Singapore and Hong Kong, and has held research fellowships at Princeton’s University Center for Human Values and Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 31, 2020
Hierarchies surround us. The default Western model has been to pretend they don't exist -- the very word itself has negative connotations today. Bell & Pei argue, reasonably persuasively, that we can't escape hierarchies just by pretending they don't exist. Instead we need to think harder about what kinds of hierarchies are just and unjust.
I feel a bit bad giving this book 2-stars instead of 3-stars. After all, the introduction is full of humility and acknowledges this book is the first to attempt to tackle the subject:
Unfortunately the flaws are hard to move past. Even if we accept that some hierarchies are inevitable, Bell & Wei are often too quick to just assume valid reasons for the existence of a hierarchy and move straight on to defining what makes them just or injust. Their measures of just/injust often feel overly simplistic and unconvincing (usually only a single metric is given). And, finally, like most Confucian-inspired thinking, there's way too much reliance on what some Chinese dude say 2,000 years ago and too little on all the philosophy and science and real-world experience since then.
That said, I think they raise some very thought-provoking questions and I look forward to the "next generation" of just hierarchy thinkers to put some more meat on these bones. Ironically, the book starts with the weakest examples of Just Hierarchy -- I think they would have done themselves a favor if they had rearranged the chapters.
Take the example of international relations. Nobody really believes in equality between nations. Nobody really thinks that, say, Trinidad & Tobago should have as much say in the world as the United States. The realities of population, wealth, military power, and geographic territory just don't work that way. Bell & Wei have a reasonable point that hierarchies are not just somewhat natural but also "good". NATO countries are all "underneath" the US and they don't go to war with one another. Warsaw Pact countries were all "underneath" the USSR and they didn't go to war with one another. Having an "overlord" country seems to result in a kind of Pax Romana among the client states.
Likewise, we all naturally accept a hierarchy between human and animals. Or between humans and machines. Or between parent and child. Or employer and employee (they use the example of domestic help, like a nanny or maid). The arguments Bell & Wei want to surface are about what is a just hierarchy. And I think they make good points that pretending there is no hierarchy isn't going to magically lead us to just solutions.
Even something like Christmas gift giving is a "hierarchical ritual", really. Hierarchy isn't good or bad per se.
But the solutions they offer simply aren't very convincing. What makes a Just Hierarchy between "intimates" (spouses, or parent/child, or even a domestic helper like a maid)? Their answer: "role reversal". One day the child becomes a parent in turn and that thus legitimizes the hierarchy. One day the maid's children could become rich and hire your grandchildren as a maid. It all feels a bit...unsatisfying. What kinds of behaviour does that role reversal justify and legitimize? Is it really "just" if the role reversal happens across generations? (How is it "just" to the maid?) What if your children never actually have children of their own? If they die childless does that mean the entire relationship was unjust?
This isn't just nitpicking. Take the example of spouses. What does "role reversal" even really mean here? That one month out of the year, the husband stays home and takes care of the kids while the wife goes to work? Beyond being entirely impractical, it still isn't clear what quantity and frequency of role reversal is needed to justify things.
Admittedly, this was probably the least convincing chapter of the entire book (why is it the first chapter!?!). But other chapters suffer from similar problems. Their core concept of what constitutes a Just Hierarchy in a specific situation sounds fine on the surface but the devil is always in the details. They acknowledge this is the first book on the subject of Just Hierarchy so some of that is excusable but it still leaves the reader feeling fairly unsatisfied.
It is important to think about which forms of hierarchy are justifed and how they can be made compatible with egalitarian goals. We need to distinguish between just and unjust forms of hierarchy and think of ways to promote the good forms and minimize the influence of bad forms
I feel a bit bad giving this book 2-stars instead of 3-stars. After all, the introduction is full of humility and acknowledges this book is the first to attempt to tackle the subject:
Our book is preliminary—to be more positive, it is the first systematic exploration of just hierarchies in modern societies—and we look forward to critical comments that will allow somebody else to write a better book on the topic.
Unfortunately the flaws are hard to move past. Even if we accept that some hierarchies are inevitable, Bell & Wei are often too quick to just assume valid reasons for the existence of a hierarchy and move straight on to defining what makes them just or injust. Their measures of just/injust often feel overly simplistic and unconvincing (usually only a single metric is given). And, finally, like most Confucian-inspired thinking, there's way too much reliance on what some Chinese dude say 2,000 years ago and too little on all the philosophy and science and real-world experience since then.
That said, I think they raise some very thought-provoking questions and I look forward to the "next generation" of just hierarchy thinkers to put some more meat on these bones. Ironically, the book starts with the weakest examples of Just Hierarchy -- I think they would have done themselves a favor if they had rearranged the chapters.
Take the example of international relations. Nobody really believes in equality between nations. Nobody really thinks that, say, Trinidad & Tobago should have as much say in the world as the United States. The realities of population, wealth, military power, and geographic territory just don't work that way. Bell & Wei have a reasonable point that hierarchies are not just somewhat natural but also "good". NATO countries are all "underneath" the US and they don't go to war with one another. Warsaw Pact countries were all "underneath" the USSR and they didn't go to war with one another. Having an "overlord" country seems to result in a kind of Pax Romana among the client states.
Likewise, we all naturally accept a hierarchy between human and animals. Or between humans and machines. Or between parent and child. Or employer and employee (they use the example of domestic help, like a nanny or maid). The arguments Bell & Wei want to surface are about what is a just hierarchy. And I think they make good points that pretending there is no hierarchy isn't going to magically lead us to just solutions.
Even something like Christmas gift giving is a "hierarchical ritual", really. Hierarchy isn't good or bad per se.
But the solutions they offer simply aren't very convincing. What makes a Just Hierarchy between "intimates" (spouses, or parent/child, or even a domestic helper like a maid)? Their answer: "role reversal". One day the child becomes a parent in turn and that thus legitimizes the hierarchy. One day the maid's children could become rich and hire your grandchildren as a maid. It all feels a bit...unsatisfying. What kinds of behaviour does that role reversal justify and legitimize? Is it really "just" if the role reversal happens across generations? (How is it "just" to the maid?) What if your children never actually have children of their own? If they die childless does that mean the entire relationship was unjust?
This isn't just nitpicking. Take the example of spouses. What does "role reversal" even really mean here? That one month out of the year, the husband stays home and takes care of the kids while the wife goes to work? Beyond being entirely impractical, it still isn't clear what quantity and frequency of role reversal is needed to justify things.
Admittedly, this was probably the least convincing chapter of the entire book (why is it the first chapter!?!). But other chapters suffer from similar problems. Their core concept of what constitutes a Just Hierarchy in a specific situation sounds fine on the surface but the devil is always in the details. They acknowledge this is the first book on the subject of Just Hierarchy so some of that is excusable but it still leaves the reader feeling fairly unsatisfied.
September 28, 2021
An interesting and quirky exploration of an important topic that starts strong, but finishes weak.
January 9, 2021
link: From my review in the New Rambler
Imagine a drowning city. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheets has led to a ten-foot rise in global sea-levels. You think this is bad, but it is followed by further melting at the Aurora Basin in East Antarctica, resulting in another forty-foot rise. In his novel, New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson paints a picture of a flooded Manhattan, where morning commuters use vaporetti to travel to and from work and live in apartment towers that reach up out of the rising waters into the sky. As you might imagine, the city suffers from staggering income inequality. Hedge-fund millionaires weave in and out of shipping lanes in their private speedboats, as kids who can’t read ferry people around in leaky gondolas through waters poisoned with toxic waste. The world is facing an unprecedented existential threat. And survival will demand collective action and sacrifice. In such a world, what kind of government would you want calling the shots?
This question is not something only out of the world of fiction. Climate change and a worldwide pandemic are on everyone’s mind. Yet, for all the talk, it could be argued that intellectuals are not discussing enough what types of government might be best suited for making the tough decisions necessary for long-term planning and collective preparation. One notable exception to this is political philosopher Daniel Bell, who for the last two decades, has been writing books and a seemingly endless stream of provocative op-ed pieces highlighting the ways in which less-democratic forms of government might be better suited to tackling the tough issues we now face.
Read the rest here.
Imagine a drowning city. The collapse of the Greenland ice sheets has led to a ten-foot rise in global sea-levels. You think this is bad, but it is followed by further melting at the Aurora Basin in East Antarctica, resulting in another forty-foot rise. In his novel, New York 2140, Kim Stanley Robinson paints a picture of a flooded Manhattan, where morning commuters use vaporetti to travel to and from work and live in apartment towers that reach up out of the rising waters into the sky. As you might imagine, the city suffers from staggering income inequality. Hedge-fund millionaires weave in and out of shipping lanes in their private speedboats, as kids who can’t read ferry people around in leaky gondolas through waters poisoned with toxic waste. The world is facing an unprecedented existential threat. And survival will demand collective action and sacrifice. In such a world, what kind of government would you want calling the shots?
This question is not something only out of the world of fiction. Climate change and a worldwide pandemic are on everyone’s mind. Yet, for all the talk, it could be argued that intellectuals are not discussing enough what types of government might be best suited for making the tough decisions necessary for long-term planning and collective preparation. One notable exception to this is political philosopher Daniel Bell, who for the last two decades, has been writing books and a seemingly endless stream of provocative op-ed pieces highlighting the ways in which less-democratic forms of government might be better suited to tackling the tough issues we now face.
Read the rest here.
September 16, 2020
Thought provoking, but that’s about it. I felt it could have gone more into analyzing hierarchies deemed to be just vs. unjust instead of relying so heavily on a survey of past philosophers.
Read
October 24, 2020A defense that sort of work
June 1, 2023
Overall, a good book.
Read this a while back but I still think about it.
Read this a while back but I still think about it.
December 20, 2022
nachlassend
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews