Rawls's Idea Research Articles

Rawls, Public Reason and the Limits of Liberal Justification

This article is a contribution to a critical exploration of the liberal project of normatively justifying basic political principles. The specific focus is John Rawls's use of the idea of public reason. After briefly discussing the evolution of Rawls's ideas from A Theory of Justice to his most recent writings, the key components of his conception of public reason are set out. Two principal lines of criticism are developed. The first is that the criteria of legitimacy Rawls establishes for a democratic procedure are unworkably demanding. The second is that there is no reason to think that resort to the idea of public reason will significantly constrain the scope of substantive political disagreement within a constitutional democracy. The article concludes with a few speculative reflections about the relevance of the limitations of Rawls's account of public reason for the project of liberal justification more generally.

Critical Theory and the Seducement of the "Art of the Possible"

In order to remedy the difficulties arising from his lifeworld/system distinction, such as the inability of his theory to account for the possibility of legitimate political power, Jürgen Habermas' attention turned toward greater abstraction through an appeal to legal theory as the basis of political consensus in the face of problems of diversity, complexity and pluralism in the modern world. This turn is made possible by an appropriation of some concepts of liberal theory, specifically John Rawls's ideas of "overlapping consensus" and "reflective equilibrium." The author argues that Habermas' insufficiently critical appropriation of these concepts leads to an inadequate account of political power that takes the existing political order as already legitimate, thereby compromising the critical thrust of his own theory.

Rawls in Portugal and Spain

First, this article puts forth a political and cultural explanation for the fact that the work of Rawls and other American liberal analytic political philosophers was neglected in Portugal during the 1970s and 1980s. Second, the article describes Portuguese reactions to Rawls's ideas in the 1990s, focusing on commentaries by scholars and `public intellectuals'. Throughout this period, there was a gradual shift from glib partisan judgements to more careful responses. Third, the reception of Rawls in Portugal is compared with the reception in Spain. This comparison shows that both broad social context and the nature of academia tended to be more hospitable to Rawls in Spain than in Portugal. However, the situation is changing.

Rawls in the Netherlands

In a comprehensive assessment of the penetration of Rawls's ideas in the Netherlands since 1971 five debates are discerned in which different aspects are highlighted or play a role. Some of these debates are more or less ongoing ones, some overlap with each other, and some can be pinpointed more precisely in time. In the first 15 years following the publication of A Theory of Justice, attention was focused on the distributive implications of `justice as fairness'. Next, the `liberalism-communitarianism debate' came to the fore. More recently, Kantian aspects of Rawls's theory have been discussed. A fourth, also more recent debate relates to problems of multiculturalism. Finally, in recent years, and more or less in conjunction with the debate on multiculturalism, the current situation of the Dutch welfare state has been discussed. Here we get back to the core of Rawlsian theory, its distributive implications. But now it is argued that this theory focuses too much on equality at the expense of responsibility and incentives.

Rawls in Italy

The article has three parts. The first is devoted to the analysis of some features of Italian philosophy that might be used to explain why analytic philosophy of politics, and analytic philosophy in general, has few practitioners. The second part gives an explanation of the relatively small audience Rawls has among liberals in Italy. Some features of the Italian liberal tradition might be helpful in explaining this fact; hence a short presentation of these features (as exemplified by Croce) is outlined. The third part deals with the reception of Rawls's ideas among the small group of analytic political philosophers in Italy.

The 'third way' and social justice

In reaction to Steve Buckler's and David Dolowitz's earlier contribution to this journal, I argue that New Labour's 'third way' cannot be founded on John Rawls's theory of justice. 'Third way' practice contradicts Rawls's ideas about both redistributive justice and social justice in a broader sense.

Three readings of political liberalism: Rawls, Maritain and Crick

John Rawls's idea of political liberalism, understood as a 'merely' political doctrine rather than as an aspect of a more comprehensive moral view, has been at the forefront of discussion in contemporary political theory. The idea is commonly discussed in relation to perfectionist liberalism on the one hand, and modus vivendi pluralism on the other. In this essay, I examine political liberalism in a different context, by analysing the ideas of political order advanced in well-known works by Jacques Maritain and Bernard Crick and comparing them with Rawls's ideas. The examination deepens our understanding both of Rawls's specific account of political liberalism and of the problems confronting any account of liberalism understood as a political ideology appropriate to a society characterized by various types of pluralism.

Liberal education: An overlapping pragmatic consensus

In reviewing the course of liberal education in the US during the 20th century, Bruce Kimball in 1995 proposed that a pragmatic consensus was emerging about the understanding of liberal education. The two-fold tradition of liberal education, with its shifting emphases and accommodations between 'orators' and 'philosophers,' was being transformed into a 'new American tradition of liberal education deeply rooted in the resurgent intellectual tradition of pragmatism'. A number of different, even contradictory, criticisms of Kimball's thesis have been offered concerning the existence and nature of such a consensus and its relationship(s) to pragmatism. We suggest that the consensus thesis and the criticisms it has encountered might be best understood by comparing it to Rawls's idea of an 'overlapping consensus'. Comparing and contrasting Kimball's project and Rawls's approach suggests that the emerging consensus concerning liberal education at the beginning of the 21st century is an overlapping consensus, that is, a consensus whose nature is pragmatic, as well as a consensus whose substantive tenets are rationalized by pragmatism. Understanding the consensus in this way accounts for the varied criticism that Kimball's thesis has received and makes a significant difference in understanding the theory and practice of liberal education in the 21st century.

Cooperative production with unequal skills: The solidarity approach to compensation

We consider a simple production model and we assume that agents have unequal production skills which can in no way be attributed to their responsibility. We study how it is possible, if at all, to compensate for differential skills by applying Rawls's idea of a collective sharing in the benefits of skills. For this purpose, we introduce an axiom of solidarity, according to which agents should all be affected in the same direction if the profile of personal skills changes. We show that particular allocation rules are characterized be combining this axiom with a requirement of non-discrimination among preferences, or with a property capturing Nozick's idea of guaranteeing a minimal benefit from one's own skill.

The limits of Rawlsian justice

The idea of fairness lies at the heart of the concept of justice proposed by political philosopher John Rawls, a concept that liberals have often invoked to defend the welfare state. In The Limits of Rawlsian Justice political theorist Roberto Alejandro challenges the assumptions that Rawls set out to defend his position. While other opponents of Rawls have attempted to offer an alternative to his concept of justice as fairness, Alejandro instead examines Rawls from within his own writings, testing Rawls's assumptions on the basis of those assumptions themselves. As a result, Alejandro shows that Rawls's idea of justice as fairness is fraught with inner tensions, exposed to utilitarian dangers, and far from being the coherent model Rawls promised. Alejandro concludes that Rawls's notion of justice-as-fairness preserves the status quo, overlooks the realities of inequalities in today's society, and is inherently conservative. As a theoretical paradigm, it is exhausted. He urges that we acknowledge the limits of Rawlsian justice both as a defense of the welfare state and as the basis of a just society.

On the Relevance of John Rawls's Theory of Justice to Welfare Economics

Mainstream microeconomic theory makes some use of John Rawls's Theory of Justicein discussing welfare economics and social welfare functionals. While various elements of his approach are usually mentioned, his basic point is generally taken to be his difference principle (maximizing the welfare of the worst off individual) applied as a decision principle for evaluating the equity of resource allocation. To take the difference principle as the essence of Rawls's work is an error. The present paper reviews the basic argument of the Theory of Justice compares it with the use that economists make of it, and concludes that in a number of quite specific ways Rawls's ideas are misrepresented and misused by mainstream microeconomists.

The ethics of social science research.

Ethical thinking about social science research is dominated by a biomedical model whose salient features are the assumption that only potential harms to subjects of research are relevant in the ethical evaluation of that research, and in the emphasis on securing informed consent in order to establish ethical proxy. A number of counter-examples are considered to the assumption, a number of defences against these counter-examples are examined, and an alternative model is proposed for the ethical evaluation of social science research: a model which can cope with the systemic harms (harms other than those to participants as participants) which have been identified. This model is based on John Rawls's idea of original position reasoning and treats social science research as an institutional feature of the basic structure of society.

The Idea of “Free Public Reason”

Abstract. In this paper the nature and the role of Rawls's idea of a “free public reason” are examined with an emphasis on the divide between the private and the public spheres, a divide which is the hallmark of a liberal democracy. Criticisms from both the so‐called Continental tradition and the Communitarian opponents to liberalism insist on the ineffectiveness of such a conception, on its inability to establish a political consensus on democracy. But it would be a mistake to see a contractarian theory of justice, such as Rawls's justice as fairness, as grounding the social contract in a public use of reason. Such a contract would indeed be susceptible to endless conflicts and renegotiations and would never achieve consensus. Therefore, a distinction must be made between the values of justice that are present in and through the “original” contractual position and the that regulate the public sphere and guarantee its stability.