1 See Susan, Moller Okin Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books 1989Google Scholar); Carole Pateman, ‘Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy,’ in Anne, Phillips ed., Feminism and Equality (New York: New York University Press 1987), 103-26Google Scholar; and Zillah, R. Eisenstein The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism (New York: Longman 1981)Google Scholar. For Okin’s most recent work on this subject, see ‘Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender,’ Ethics (October 1994).

2 John, Rawls Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press 1993)Google Scholar, xxix

3 Susan, Moller Okin Justice, Gender, and the Family (New York: Basic Books 1989), 124-5Google Scholar

4 See George, Marsden Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth- Century Evangelicalism: 1870-1925 (New York: Oxford University Press 1980)Google Scholar.

5 Tim, LaHaye The Battle for the Family (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell 1982), 210-11Google Scholar; quoted in James, Davison Hunter Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York: Basic Books 1991), 181Google Scholar

6 Culture Wars, 180-95. See also Barbara, Ehrenreich and Deirdre, English For Her Own Good: 150 Years of Expert Advice to Women (New York: Doubleday 1979), 318-22.Google Scholar

7 Kristin, Luker Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood (Berkeley: University of California Press 1984), 159-60Google Scholar. Luker’s findings are based upon an extensive inquiry into the world views of pro-life and pro-choice political activists. They are not intended as a description of all individuals with pro-life or pro-choice moral convictions.

8 Frances, Fitzgerald Cities on a Hill: A Journey Through Contemporary American Cultures (New York: Simon & Schuster 1986), 158-9Google Scholar

9 John, Rawls A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1971Google Scholar). The aura of universal validity is created in the opening chapters, wherein we encounter numerous references to the nature of ‘society,’ ‘social institutions,’ and ‘rational persons’ seemingly presented as concepts with universal scope. It is implied as well in Rawls’s quest for ‘an Archimedean point from which the basic structure [of society] itself can be appraised’ (260). The Archimedean point was located in the idea of hypothetical choice behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ as a method for concluding the terms of a unanimous and comprehensive social contract. The parties under the veil- unaware of their personal circumstances, goals, and values-might even be from alien political worlds, for they ‘do not know the particular circumstances of their own society … its economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve’ (137).

10 John, Rawls ‘Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,’ The Journal of Philosaphy 77 (1980), 518Google Scholar

11 John, Rawls ‘Justice as Fairness: Political Not Metaphysical,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985), 245Google Scholar

12 Political Liberalism, 137. See also 99, 107, 175, and 195.

13 Ibid., 195. See also ‘The Priority of the Right and Ideas of the Good,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988), 264.

14 Ibid., 199. See also ‘The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,’ 267.

15 We should remember the historic impact of ending segregation in privately owned public accommodations, integrating schools, making racial tolerance part of the public school curriculum, and using the power of public censure to discourage the expressions of racist views on the airwaves. Whether they are taken to reinforce values implicit in a purely political conception of justice, or values held to be true or valid in some deeper sense, is irrelevant from a practical standpoint. This agenda has had a profound effect on how people live, and as we know was bitterly resisted by those who saw it as a threat to their way of life. Rawls’s rejection of comprehensive liberalism would seem to offer no guarantee against the use of public power with the same ultimate effect upon fundamentalist culture.

16 To be precise, legitimacy does not require that everyone agree, says Rawls. In Political Liberalism we find that ‘an adequate conception of justice’ must be able to gain the support of all ‘reasonable citizens who affirm reasonable comprehensive doctrines’ (36; emphasis mine). This appears to qualify the position in some earlier essays, where the word ‘reasonable’ does not appear. E.g., from ‘Justice as Fairness’: ’We hope that this political conception of justice may at least be supported by what we may call an “overlapping consensus,” that is, by a consensus that includes all the opposing philosophical and religious doctrines likely to persist and to gain adherents in a more or less just constitutional democratic society’ (225-6). See also ’The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,’ Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7 (1987) 1-25. However, there is Jess to this than meets the eye. In Political Liberalism Rawls deliberately construes the concept of ‘reasonableness’ very broadly so as to make it difficult to exclude comprehensive views based on religious faith. A comprehensive doctrine is ‘reasonable’ if (1) it organizes and characterizes recognized values so that they are compatible with one another and express an intelligible view of the world; (2) it identifies which values count as especially significant and how to balance them when they conflict; and (3) it belongs to or draws upon a tradition of thought and doctrine (59-60). There is no reason to think that fundamentalist religion need fail this test of reasonableness. On page 170 Rawls claims that ‘all the main historical religions’ count as reasonable doctrines, as long as they have an account of ‘free faith’- i.e., the view that faith cannot be coerced but must be freely given. Again, on this criterion of reasonableness, the fundamentalist world view described above qualifies as reasonable, and Rawls allows that only ‘certain kinds’ of fundamentalism would not.

17 Ibid., 224-5. The doctrine of ‘public reason’ extends the idea expressed in ‘Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical.’ As Rawls put it there, in order to formulate a unifying doctrine in a pluralistic society, ‘justice as fairness deliberately stays on the surface, philosophically speaking’ (230).

18 See, for example, sociobiologist Edward, O. Wilson’s On Human Nature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1978)Google Scholar; philosopher Allan, Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster 1987Google Scholar); and economist Gary, Becker’s A Treatise on the Family (Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1981)Google Scholar.

19 See Susan Faludi’s survey of recent social science with an anti-feminist slant in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (New York: Doubleday 1992), 4-35.

20 As Rawls puts it in ‘The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,’ his theory ‘starts from fundamental intuitive ideas latent in the shared public culture’ ﹛20).

21 Will, Kymlicka Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press 1990Google Scholar), ch. 7; and William, A. Galston Liberal Purposes: Goods, Virtues, and Diversity in the Liberal State (New York: Cambridge University Press 1991Google Scholar). K ymlicka attempts to show that the arguments found in Okin’ s work can be brought into the liberal framework, properly understood. Galston argues that liberals must limit their commitment to the ideal of personal autonomy and recognize that the state must support the traditional family if valid liberal ideas of justice are to prevail in public life. Like Rawls, he does not discuss the feminist critique of the traditional family.