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John Rawls and the Task of Political Philosophy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 February 2009

Paul Weithman
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Abstract

In this article, I sketch a reading of Rawls's work that ties together many of the features that distinguish it from the work of other authors commemorated in this issue. On this reading, the two world wars and the Holocaust pressed the question of whether a just liberal democracy is possible. Seeking to defend reasonable faith in that possibility, Rawls developed a theory of justice for an ideally just liberal democracy. He argued that such a society is a “real possibility” because, given reasonable psychological assumptions, the basic institutions of a just society would engender the moral support of its citizens. In doing so, Rawls challenged alternative accounts of moral motivation that enjoyed some currency in the analytic philosophy of the time. The interpretation of Rawls's work defended here therefore locates him in the philosophical as well as the political history of the twentieth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 71 , Issue 1 , Winter 2009 , pp. 113 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2009

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References

1 The qualification is that, while Dewey was raised in a liberal Protestant household, he does not seem to have made the study of Protestant theology that Rawls did nor does his work show the result of engagement with theological doctrines. On Dewey's religious upbringing, see Westbrook, Robert, John Dewey and American Democracy (Cornell University Press, 1991), 6, 22Google Scholar. For Rawls's study of Protestant theology, see Robert Adams, “The Theological Ethics of the Young Rawls and Its Background,” forthcoming.

2 Berlin, Isaiah, The First and the Last (New York: NYRB Books, 1998), 28Google Scholar.

3 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), xvii–xviiiGoogle Scholar.

4 Rawls, John, Collected Papers, ed. Freeman, Samuel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999)Google Scholar [ed. Freeman], 305.

5 Rawls, Collected Papers, 448; see also Rawls, John, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 172Google Scholar.

6 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 198–99.

7 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lxii (emphases added).

8 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lxi.

9 Here I rely on Political Liberalism, lxii. I also rely on Rawls's revealing but neglected remark in Theory of Justice that citizens' mutual knowledge that they possess a sense of justice is the preferred way to avert the hazards of a generalized prisoner's dilemma; see Theory of Justice, 238 note 8.

10 Rawls, John, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, ed. Herman, Barbara (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 319Google Scholar.

11 Rawls, History of Moral Philosophy, 319 (emphasis added).

12 See Adams, Robert M., “Moral Faith,” The Journal of Philosophy 92 (1995): 75–95, 80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Rawls, History of Moral Philosophy, 320; cf. Nozick, Robert, The Examined Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1989), 236–42Google Scholar.

14 See the schematic remarks at Political Liberalism, 164–68.

15 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lxii.

16 See, for example, Rawls, Collected Papers, 589.

17 Misunderstanding what the second stage of the stability argument is meant to show, some readers have questioned whether it is necessary. For an example, see Barry, Brian, “John Rawls and the Search for Stability,” Ethics 105 (1995): 874–915CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 In his characteristically deep and acute essay “The Problem of Evil, the Social Contract, and the History of Ethics,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 82 (2001): 11–25, 13, Peter de Marneffe says, “It is this thought … that humanity is redeemed by its capacity for social relations of mutual respect – that animates Rawls's Political Liberalism.” Read in context, it is clear that by “redeemed” de Marneffe means something like “redeemed in our own eyes.” Thus I read him as arguing that Rawls's later work is animated by a concern to vindicate our belief in the goodness of humanity. As my own remarks suggest, I believe this concern animates Rawls's earlier work as well.

19 In his lectures on Rousseau, , published in Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed. Freeman, Samuel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar, Rawls says: “Rousseau's belief that human nature is good, and that it is through institutions that we become bad, comes to these two propositions: (a) Social institutions and the conditions of social life exercise a predominant influence over which human propensities will develop and express themselves over time. When realized, some of these propensities are good and some bad; (b) There exists at least one possible and reasonably workable scheme of legitimate political institutions that both satisfies the principles of political right and meets the requirements for institutional stability and human happiness.” The quoted passage is from page 206. Rawls does not say he agrees with Rousseau's belief that human nature is good or that his own belief “comes to [the same] two propositions.” But if we suppose so, then we can read his work as, among other things, a sustained attempt to argue for the goodness of humanity. Many of us may think that the conception of goodness Rawls finds in Rousseau is too weak. We may also think that human nature is not good, or is only qualifiedly good, according to a stronger and more plausible conception. Even if we think Rawls has not shown, and cannot show, that human nature is good properly speaking, the conclusion he does defend is certainly significant.

20 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 44.

21 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 5.

22 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 14 note 15.

23 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 418.

24 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 418.

25 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 418.

26 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 499.

27 The arguments to which I refer here are found in section 86 of Theory of Justice. I lay out these arguments in my Why Political Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

28 Rawls, Political Liberalism, lxi.

29 On the need for terms of peace which do not humiliate, see Rawls, Collected Papers, 569; cf. also principle 5 on 567.

30 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 486.

31 Rawls, Collected Papers, 277.

32 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 477.

33 Rawls, John, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 47Google Scholar. Rawls discusses the conditions of defensive war at 89ff.

34 Rawls, Political Liberalism, 392.

35 My tribute was published as “John Rawls: A Remembrance,” The Review of Politics 65 (2003): 5–10.