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Rawls’ Political Liberalism
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Rawls’ Political LiberalismThe result of Rawls’ reconsideration was a step back from his concern with economic justice. Although still concerned with poverty and inequality, by 1993 Rawls was more concerned with “getting along.” Like Richard Rorty, Rawls had perhaps come to accept the inevitability of economic inequality, and had been sobered by the supposed failure of planned economies. For whatever reason, Rawls’ Political Liberalism represented a retreat from the absolutist rationalism of A Theory of Justice . The thesis of Political Liberalism was that people living in a pluralist democracy ought to participate in public deliberation (he called it “deliberative democracy”) in a reasonable and non-doctrinaire way. Rawls did not see this thesis as a complete abandonment of his earlier concern for justice; instead, he modified his two principles of justice in this way: “In addition to the changes in the process of justifying justice as fairness, there are some significant changes in Rawls's views of the two principles of justice. Here is how they are stated in Political Liberalism: 1. Each person has an equal claim to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme for all; and in this scheme the equal basic liberties, and only those liberties, are to be guaranteed their fair value. 2. Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society” (http://caae.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/Forum/meta/background/Rawls_pl.html). While Rawls still believed that these principles were important, he was willing to subordinate them to public discussion, because his new enemy was the tendency of people in diverse groups to bring their “comprehensive doctrines” into public discussion. He was troubled, for example, by people debating about abortion and holding to moral absolutes, which guaranteed people would always talk past each other. He objected to religious extremism, believing instead that people ought to take whatever parts of their religion were amenable to public deliberation, and cooperate with the moral beliefs of others. Writing a few years after the publication of Political Liberalism, Rawls explained: “Central to the idea of public reason is that it neither criticizes nor attacks any comprehensive doctrine, religious or nonreligious, except insofar as that doctrine is incompatible with the essentials of public reason and a democratic polity. The basic requirement is that a reasonable doctrine accepts a constitutional democratic regime and its companion idea of legitimate law. While democratic societies will differ in the specific doctrines that are influential and active within them - as they differ in the western democracies of Europe and the United States, Israel, and India - finding a suitable idea of public reason is a concern that faces them all” (Rawls ’97 (John, Philosopher at Harvard, University of Chicago Law Review Summer, 1997). Indeed, Rawls had come a long way from A Theory of Justice . In that earlier work, he seemed to believe that the chief impediment to justice was the gap between the rich and the poor. Now, he saw those differences as simply more of the kind of differences people should “talk about.” The Rawls of Political Liberalism believed that conversation was the answer to all injustice and oppression: “The definitive idea for deliberative democracy is the idea of deliberation itself. When citizens deliberate, they exchange views and debate their supporting reasons concerning public political questions. They suppose that their political opinions may be revised by discussion with other citizens; and therefore these opinions are not simply a fixed outcome of their existing private or nonpolitical interests. It is at this point that public reason is crucial, for it characterizes such citizens' reasoning concerning constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice” (Rawls ’97 (John, Philosopher at Harvard, University of Chicago Law Review Summer, 1997). The Problem of Material DistributionMy argument against the Rawls of A Theory of Justice can be summarized as follows: Rawls makes a strong case for helping the poor, but he makes this case at the expense of empowering the poor, or ending poverty altogether. Indeed, the implementation of Rawlsian justice in our current, materially unequal world, is “mutually exclusive” with either empowerment or the end of poverty. First, Rawls appeals to self-interest rather than morality or equality in his maxim that inequalities ought to benefit the most disadvantaged members of society. Because of this, he is constantly held hostage to the notion that, were we ever to realize that the oppression or impoverishment of a few people would be to the benefit of many others, then “rationally” we ought to allow that. This makes Rawls a rather crude utilitarian, although he would never admit this. Second, Rawlsian justice amounts to little more than a “buying off” of the poor. Remember, A Theory of Justice does not propose that we ever eliminate poverty. In fact, the elimination of poverty would probably require a substantial modification of Rawls’ first principle of freedom. Instead, Rawls argues that it is rational (not necessarily morally just) for the rich to give the poor enough assistance to avoid backlash. As Robert Alejandro argues in the evidence section below, this distributive scheme does not even see poverty as an evil to be eliminated. At best, the poor are an inconvenient reminder of the second principle. Finally, Rawls gives no material, economic, or even political mechanism for any redistributive scheme that would help the poor even in his limited sense. One of the more controversial questions following Rawls’ original theory was whether it required “socialism” as a means of achieving the second principle. Although Rawls remained officially agnostic on the question, it is clear that he is no socialist, since (as I argued above) the elimination of poverty is simply not on his agenda. This, of course, begs the question of how the wealthy are to “help” the poor. In its most unimaginative sense, the help takes the form of social programs, welfare, free education and perhaps a few other handouts. But given the way in which these programs have been undercut and discredited by recent administrations, one wonders if Rawls sold his system of justice short by leaving so little unsaid about how inequalities were to work to the benefit of the least advantaged. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 5.81 Mb. 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