12th August 2024: digital purchasing is currently unavailable on Cambridge Core. Due to recent technical disruption affecting our publishing operation, we are experiencing some delays to publication. We are working hard to restore services as soon as possible and apologise for the inconvenience. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
This article analyzes the attempt to offer a contextual or historical justification of political liberalism. This type of justificatory argument for liberal political principles has recently been advanced by John Rawls in a series of essays and by Charles Larmore in his 1987 book entitled Patterns of Moral Complexity. Both Rawls and Larmore argue that this justification for liberal political principles avoids the problems attributed to other forms of liberalism by communitarian theorists. The central theme of this article is that the attempt to ground political liberalism in a contextual argument is incoherent.
Cet article porte sur la tentative d'offrir une justification du libéralisme politique en tenant compte du contexte et de l'histoire. Cette façon de justifier les principes politiques libéraux a été récemment proposée par John Rawls dans une série d'essais et par Charles Larmore dans un livre publié en 1987, Patterns of Moral Complexity. Rawls et Larmore démontrent que cette justification des principes libéraux élude les problèmes attribués à d'autre formes de libéralisme par des théoriciens du phénomène communautaire. Le thème central de cet article est de démontrer la faiblesse de cette tentative qui visait à asseoir le libéralisme politique sur un argument contextuelle.
1 Sandel, Michael J., Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982Google Scholar); MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981Google Scholar); Charvet, John, A Critique of Freedom and Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981CrossRefGoogle Scholar); and Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, Knowledge and Politics (New York: Free Press, 1975Google Scholar).
2 Rawls, John, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” Journal of Philosophy 77 (1980), 532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), 11.Google Scholar
4 Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” 519.
5 Rawls, John, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 14 (1985), 236.Google Scholar
6 Gewirth, Alan, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978Google Scholar).
7 Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 70–72.
8 Ibid., 175–83, and Unger, Knowledge and Politics, 56–57.
9 See Williams, Bernard, “Persons, Character and Morality,” Moral Luck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 2–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 See Hampton, Jean, “Political Philosophy and Metaphysics,” Ethics 99 (1989), 798.CrossRefGoogle Scholar She also argues that Rawls's recent essays leave themselves open to two mutually incompatible interpretations.
11 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 225; emphasis added.
12 See Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 120–21.
13 This is the argument for excluding them from the original position. See Rawls, John, “Fairness to Goodness,” Philosophical Review 84 (1975), 537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 Rawls, John, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 7 (1987), 6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
15 Rawls explicitly endorses justificatory neutrality or what he sometimes calls neutrality of procedure. Rawls accepts that his liberal theory is not neutral with respect to consequences, but he argues that it is derived in a way that is neutral among, or does not appeal to, substantive ethical conceptions. See Rawls, John, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 17 (1988), 263.Google Scholar
16 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 228–29.
17 Ibid., 229.
18 It may be objected that I am positing a very strong conception of the value of personal autonomy which Rawls does not endorse. It is true that Rawls claims to be agnostic on questions of value in these recent essays. See Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 245–46. However, he also claims that we have a higher-order interest in “realiz[ing] and exercis[ing] [our] capacity to form, revise and rationally to pursue a conception of the good,” which seems to be based on a conception of the value of personal autonomy. Rawls,” Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” 525.
19 This feminist point is made persuasively in Baier, Annette C., “Pilgrim's Progress,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 18 (1988), 330CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gauthier, David, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 102Google Scholar; and Friedman, Marilyn, “Feminism and Modern Friendship: Dislocating the Community,” Ethics 99 (1989), 281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 This is implicit in Rawls's procedure to apply the principle of justice to the social framework only.
21 This point is also made by Joseph Raz, “Facing Diversity: The Case of Epistemic Abstinence,” 19. He writes, “It is difficult to see how the popularity of a (putative) ideal bears on its validity.” Later he points out that the acceptance of the principles of justice in Rawls's later essays is not achieved “under conditions which amount to a free and informed consent to them” (20).
22 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 249.
23 Larmore, Charles E., Patterns of Moral Complexity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 43–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 93.
25 Rawls's claim in A Theory of Justice that his list of primary goods are all-purpose means to the fulfillment of any ends was met with the objection, persuasively put forward by Thomas Nagel, that Rawls's primary goods are not neutral among different ethical conceptions or plans of life, because they are not equally valuable to the pursuit of all plans of life. See Nagel, Thomas, “Rawls on Justice,” Philosophical Review 82 (1973), 228–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This point is taken up in a different way by Michael Sandel in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 42, which argues that primary goods only make sense in terms of a deep Kantian moral theory which emphasizes the autonomy of persons.
26 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 225.
27 Rawls, “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” 263.
28 Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 69.
29 Bernard Williams, “Persons, Character and Morality,” 4–5, and Michael Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, 61–64.
30 Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 74.
31 Rawls, “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” 241.
32 Gauthier, Morals by Agreement.
33 Larmore, Patterns of Moral Complexity, 56.
34 Ibid., 61.
35 Ibid., 59.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 59–60.
38 Ibid., 60.
39 Ibid., 61.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid., 63.
42 Ibid., 66.
43 Ibid.; emphasis in original.
44 Dent, N. J. H., “The Tensions in Liberalism,” Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1988), 481–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
45 Rawls, “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus,” 18.
