Thick and Thin: Moral Arguments at Home and Abroad.

Invited to give the Frank M. Covey, Jr., Lectures in Political Analysis at Loyola University (Chicago) in 1993, Michael Walzer decided to elaborate upon and respond to the critics of Spheres of Justice. Less systematic than his earlier book, although Walzer is anything but a systematic thinker in the tradition of John Rawls, Thick and Thin is more poetic. It is a moving, eloquent, and at times inspiring meditation on the problem of obligation.

Spheres of Justice argued for a notion of complex, rather than simple, equality. Simple equality exists when people are relatively equal along any one dimension, be it income, power, or status. But pluralism, Walzer argued, creates many spheres of life, all of them important. A just society is one that recognizes complex equality, in which the advantages that accompany any one dimension - say beauty - do not automatically translate into advantages along another dimension - say influence. Most moral philosophers are inclined to argue for simple equality, neoclassical economics, with its origins in the thought of Adam Smith, being a representative example. Such traditions, if fact, try to present the world, which is complex, as if it were as simple as a theory. They aim for a single currency of moral discourse; their objective is the reduction of everything to one measure of moral worth.

In Thick and Thin, Walzer extends this argument by posing the existence of two moral languages, one based on simplicity, the other on complexity. The latter, which he calls "thick," is rooted in local conditions and circumstances. It asks: what do I owe to those around me, those whose history, language, and culture are similar to mine? Thin morality, by contrast, is universal, but in applying to everyone, it also applies to no one in particular. Thin morality asks what unites me with people who do not share my company; extended to its furthest reaches, although Walzer does not extend the argument this way, it asks what obligations I have to animals or the physical environment.

Both kinds of moral language are important, but each, as one might expect from Walzer, has its own sphere. To summarize a complex argument simply, thick morality is domestic, while thin morality is international. We cannot tell the Chinese or the Poles how to provide health care, but we can respond when they demand freedom and truth. But we do have a moral obligation to think about how we can provide health care to our fellow citizens, for we share with them cultural and social resources that link our fates directly. Moral mistakes come about when we apply a thick morality where thinness is appropriate, by trying, for example, to impose our cultural values on those of a different culture. They can also occur when we apply too thin a morality in contexts that demand thickness, for then we fail to ask enough of the society that unites us.

From Walzer's perspective, neither moral philosophy nor moral practice can ever be algorithmic. There is no rule that can inform how and what we do for every case. Morality is, to use a word Walzer rarely uses, pragmatic; we know what is fight only after the fact, once we have figured out whether we chose the proper moral framework to address a particular moral need.

The great advantage of Walzer's approach is that, unlike more systematic accounts of moral obligation, it recognizes morality as a human choice. In his concluding chapter, Walzer, paralleling Durkheim, argues that human beings possess a dualistic character. Because we are capable of self-criticism, we can recognize both our subjective need and take cognizance of an objective position from which we can evaluate those needs. It follows, although Walzer does not elaborate this at any length, that adjust society is one which allows the greatest freedom to individuals to develop their internal moral voices. The pluralism of society has to be matched by a pluralism of the self. "My many-sided self (assailed from all sides) requires a thickly differentiated society in which to express my different capacities and talents, my different senses of who I am."

As sympathetic as I am to Walzer's approach, I sometimes find its idiosyncrasies troubling. For Walzer, tribes require thin moral reasoning. The minimal moral principle we ought to apply to other nations is to recognize their right to self-determination. This even applies to nations within nations: we cannot tell the Slovaks that they have no right to be independent of the Czechs. Yet demands ought to be resisted sometimes, even the demand for self-determination; it would have been morally wrong for Abraham Lincoln to allow the South independence. "Let the people go who want to go," Walzer writes. This is too easy, especially when ethnic identity is the issue.

In Spheres of Justice, Walzer argued that nations can impose membership obligations on those who enter but they cannot prevent anyone from leaving. There as well, I think, he fails to realize that borders work two ways. Thin obligations turn to thick ones when we let people in, such as Cubans who sail to Miami. But thick obligations can be turned into thin ones by letting people out; if a society pays childcare and schooling for a young citizen expecting that, when she grows up, she will pay back some of the costs in taxes, that society has a right to be concerned if she leaves for another country the minute she reaches maturity. Because the border between inside and outside is never fixed, the balance between thin and thick languages of obligation can never be established. Walzer's approach gains flexibility, but it loses in consistency.

As with Spheres of Justice, Thick and Thin should be read, not only for its substantive argument, but also for the breadth of its examples and the beauty of its prose. Michael Walzer writes on some of the most explosive issues of the day in a voice that is always calm and thoughtful. Our culture is thicker because of his presence.