John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice by Andrius Gališanka

Abstract

Reviewed by: John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice by Andrius Gališanka Alyssa R. Bernstein Andrius Gališanka. John Rawls: The Path to A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 261. Cloth, $45.00. Although Andrius Gališanka’s well-written book is interesting as a work of psychological and intellectual history based on archival research as well as speculation, and although it has considerable merits, it appears to overreach the limits of the author’s expertise. Since he has published a book on Wittgenstein and normative inquiry, and also an article on game theory in relation to Rawls, he seems well qualified to write chapters 2, 3, and 4 (“Drawing on Logical Positivism,” “Engagement with Wittgensteinian Philosophy,” and “The Fair Games of Autonomous Persons”), which I found informative and helpful. However, the shortcomings of the last chapters of the book prevent the achievement of some of its main aims. Gališanka purports to vindicate, or at least significantly support, the communitarian interpretation and critique of Rawls’s first book, A Theory of Justice (1971), offered by Michael Sandel in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). However, Gališanka does not discuss criticisms of communitarians’ interpretations of A Theory of Justice. Rawls explicitly rejected Sandel’s account, which is rebutted by Samuel Freeman and by Paul Weithman, both of whom have authored books explicating and critically analyzing Rawls’s arguments (respectively, Rawls [New York: Routledge, 2007], and Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010]). Gališanka was aware of Weithman’s book. He cites it once (in the epilogue), but unfortunately, and presumably unintentionally, creates the misleading impression that Weithman’s arguments support Gališanka’s view. The introduction does not announce that Gališanka aims to support Sandel’s interpretation, although after reading the book and then rereading the introduction, one can see that it does state this aim, albeit briefly, obscurely, and without mention of Sandel. The aim becomes more clearly evident late in the book, thanks to an endnote citing Sandel (170), and yet clearer in the epilogue, where Sandel is again cited. Instead of philosophical analysis and argumentation supporting this communitarian interpretation of A Theory of Justice, Gališanka offers eight chapters of intellectual history covering the years leading up to the book’s publication, and a single chapter (the ninth) briefly summarizing a small portion of its central ideas and arguments. Gališanka then concludes his own book with a ten-page epilogue that presents a brief overview of Rawls’s work between 1971 and 1993, and a controversial and unsupported account of Rawls’s reasons for writing his second book, Political Liberalism (1993). Although this account resembles a well-known communitarian one, Gališanka does not cite it, and he discusses neither Weithman’s nor Freeman’s critical analyses and rebuttals of it. Any reader who is unfamiliar with the academic literature about Rawls, or who is unwary, may get the (incorrect) impression that Gališanka’s book vindicates a communitarian interpretation of Rawls’s political philosophy. Gališanka says nothing about certain important changes Rawls made to early drafts of A Theory of Justice. For example, Gališanka reports that in 1962 Rawls wrote, “Roughly, I [End Page 171] want to say that an institution is just if those subject to it could have contracted into it from the original position” (157). By the time he published A Theory of Justice, Rawls had changed the word “could” to “would.” Gališanka neither explains this change of wording nor points it out, despite its being highly significant. Gališanka also reports that in 1963 Rawls wrote that “justice is owed to persons equal in capacity for moral personality” (164). By the time he published A Theory of Justice, Rawls had changed this wording, writing that “equal justice is owed to those who have the capacity [for moral personality],” that “the capacity for moral personality is a sufficient condition for being entitled to equal justice,” that this sufficient condition is “not at all stringent,” and that “provided the minimum for moral personality is satisfied, a person...