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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 435 value properties ordinarily taken to be irrelevant to judgments of a person's value or competence without eliciting the charge of honorific stereotyping? Are such primary valued properties ever relevant to judgments of a person's noninstrumental value or competence? By reciprocal first-order political discrimination, I mean a manifest attitude in which a particular property of a person that is irrelevant to judgments of that person's noninstrumental value or competence, for example her race, gender, class, sexual orientation, or religious or ethnic affiliation, is seen as a source of value or competence, in general, as a source of superiority. Primary valued properties are those perceived as elevating and valorizing its bearers accordingly. Take the case in which we are particularly drawn to befriend a valuee with whom we share a similar ethnic background, because we expect to have more in common (lifestyle, tastes, sense of humor), share similar values, or see the world from a similar perspective. In this kind of case the primary valued property is not, say, being Jewish; but rather having the same ethnic background, whatever that may be. Is similarity of ethnic background a property that is relevant to our judgments of how valuable the valuee is as a friend? No, for it does not form any part of the basis for such a judgment. That a friendship is better, richer, or more valuable in proportion to the degree of similarity of the friends' ethnic backgrounds is a judgment few would be tempted to make. In these cases, it is not the valuee's similar ethnicity itself that is the source of value, but rather the genuinely valuable properties - for example, similarity of values or worldview - with which we expect similar ethnicity to be conjoined. Rather than making a normative judgment about his value or competence as a friend in this case, we in fact make an epistemic judgment about the probability that, given the valuee's ethnic identity, he will bear properties susceptible of such normative judgments. These epistemic rules of thumb are defeasible, and may have disappointing consequences for personal relationships. For they ascribe primary value to a kind of property at the expense of others that are in fact more important for friendship - like sensitivity, similarity of values, tastes or experiences, or mutual respect - with which that kind of property is only contingently, if ever, conjoined. Presumably something like this may explain the malaise of someone who has chosen all the "right" friends, married the "right" spouse, and landed the "best" job, yet feels persistently unhappy, disconnected, and dissatisfied in her social relationships. If similarity of race, gender, sexual orientation, class background, or religious or ethnic affiliation are in themselves irrelevant to judgments of a person's noninstrumental value or competence, primary valued properties such as being of a particular race, gender, etc. are even more obviously so. At least it has yet to be demonstrated that any particular racial, ethnic, gender, class or religious group possesses the properties necessary for, e.g., friendship © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
