Political Liberalism.

• Author: Hurd, Heidi M.

There is nothing as seductive as the promise to do the impossible. As children, we sought the wonder of such promises in the demonstrations of magicians who claimed to defy the laws of physics. As philosophers, we seek a similar wonder in the theories of those who are bold enough to attempt the reconciliation of concepts that are, on their face, irreconcilable. And no one in this century has filled us with more philosophical wonder than has John Rawls. In work that has spanned the past four decades, he has advanced and refined a political philosophy that has claimed to synthesize dialectically opposed concepts: to make liberty compatible with equality; to achieve concern for others through the exercise of self-interest; to ensure that what is best for the greatest number can be meaningfully obtained without the sacrifice of the few; to accomplish distributive justice of an egalitarian sort with free-market capitalism. Who has not been touched by a sense of awe at the Rawlsian legacy, which combines many of the most compelling, but seemingly inconsistent, tenets of contractarian, utilitarian, libertarian, Marxist, and Kantian moral and political theory?

In Political Liberalism,(1) Rawls attempts his most ambitious philosophical feat yet: to "appl[y] the principle of toleration to philosophy itself,"(2) and so, to construct a political theory without using the mortar and bricks of traditional political and moral thought.(3) The result, he claims, is a "freestanding view" of justice(4)--a substantive conception of justice (as opposed to a more modest procedural conception (5)) that expressly eschews its own justification by appeal to substantive moral, political, or religious doctrines. This philosophical levitation takes liberalism to its limits: It justifies liberalism with liberalism, and so requires us to tolerate the morally wrong choices of others for reasons that we cannot claim to be morally right.(6)

In Part I of this Review, I give a very cursory overview of the complicated argument with which Rawls levitates liberalism. Those who are already well versed in the claims of Political Liberalism might prefer to turn past this part. In Section II.A, I outline the sorts of queries and criticisms that have been raised by other commentators in response to the particular tenets of Political Liberalism. In Section II.B, I pursue a new line of inquiry--one directed at determining the philosophical point of Rawls's project as a whole. As I shall make clear, the nature of "the problem of stability," which Rawls seeks to solve, is not obvious. On one interpretation--what I call the motivational interpretation--Rawls seeks to give persons reasons to do what A Theory of Justice(7) gave them sufficient reasons to believe--namely, that they should abide by the principles of justice as fairness. As I shall demonstrate in Subsection II.B.1, if this is the right interpretation of Rawls's project, Rawls is implicitly committed to a particular philosophical conception about the relationship between reasons for belief and reasons for action (namely, externalism)--a contentious philosophical conception commitment to which jeopardizes Rawls's claim to apply toleration to philosophy itself. On an alternative interpretation--what I call the justificatory interpretation--Political Liberalism gives new reasons for people to believe the correctness of what A Theory of Justice called upon them to do--namely, to structure their basic institutions in accordance with Rawls's two principles of justice. As I shall argue in Subsection II.B.2, if this is the correct interpretation of Rawls's project, then, given the constraints he imposes on those to whom his project is directed, he is preaching to the converted. In tandem, the concerns I advance in response to the alternative interpretations of Rawls's project raise questions about the conceptual coherence and philosophical importance of Political Liberalism.

1. RAWLS'S NEW PROJECT

   Rawls maintains that the levitation of liberalism is necessary to overcome what he calls "the problem of stability."(8) As he wrote in A Theory of Justice, our "scheme of social cooperation must be stable: it must be more or less regularly complied with and its basic rules willingly acted upon; and when infractions occur, stabilizing forces should exist that prevent further violations and tend to restore the arrangement."(9) The stability of a conception of justice, Rawls argued, "depends upon a balance of motives: the sense of justice that it cultivates and the aims that it encourages must normally win out against propensities toward injustice."(10)

   Why would we fear for the stability of justice as fairness in the face of its defense in A Theory of Justice? Because, Rawls claims, we must take seriously the enduring "fact of reasonable pluralism."(11) In a well-ordered society,(12) free and equal citizens will inevitably be divided over religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines, many of which are reasonable. Indeed, part of what it is to be a free and equal person in a well-ordered society is to possess "the moral power" to "form, to revise, and rationally to pursue a conception of one's rational advantage or good."(13) In light of "the burdens of judgment"--"the many hazards involved in the correct (and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgment in the ordinary course of political life"(14)--persons will endorse diverse and often conflicting conceptions of the good, a plurality of which will be reasonable.(15) As a result, a well-ordered democracy will be characterized by three facts: (1) its citizens will hold a diversity of reasonable but irreconcilable religious, philosophical, and moral views that will cause them to pursue competing conceptions of the good; (2) the only means of motivating the populace to endorse a single religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine is by the oppressive use of state power; and (3) without the use of oppressive tactics to secure unanimity, the regime will endure only if a substantial majority of its citizens willingly and freely support it.(16) It follows, Rawls believes, that in light of their reasonable religious, philosophical, and moral disagreements, citizens will willingly and freely support a regime only if the political conception on which it is founded can be the object of "an overlapping consensus."(17)

   If Rawls's two principles of justice are necessarily premised on any one of the reasonable religious, philosophical, or moral doctrines embraced by free and equal citizens in a well-ordered democracy, or if they can be justified by only a limited set of these doctrines, then they will fail to secure an overlapping consensus, and hence, they will fail to comprise a stable conception of justice. In A Theory of Justice, justice as fairness was explicitly grounded on "a partially comprehensive" doctrine(18)--a conception of the good that makes justice both an intrinsic good (worth pursuing for its own sake) and the supreme good (taking priority over all other intrinsic goods).(19) Insofar as there are reasonable comprehensive conceptions of the good that deny that justice as fairness is the supreme good, or even an intrinsic good because they hold, for example, that achieving happiness or union with God is the supreme good to which compliance with the two principles of justice is a mere means), justice as fairness cannot attract an overlapping consensus if it must rely on the conception of the good defended in A Theory of Justice.

   Political Liberalism, then, "aims for a political conception of justice as a freestanding view."(20) Rawls's project is to extract from "the shared fund of implicitly recognized basic ideas and principles" provided by "the public culture itself."(21) a substantive political theory that rests on "no specific metaphysical or epistemological doctrine beyond what is implied by the political conception itself."(22) The philosophical magic required is obvious: to obtain a basis of agreement among persons who ex hypothesi cannot agree, and to persuade persons to cooperate with one another by endorsing a political doctrine that does not affirm the religious, philosophical, or moral conceptions that make them who they are and that give their lives meaning. In short, Rawls must levitate his liberalism to a purely political plane. And to do this is seemingly to do the impossible, for it is to obtain long-term stability by divorcing the right from any particular conception of the good when it is admittedly their conceptions of the good that motivate citizens to do the right. (23)

   Rawls embarks upon this seemingly impossible task by arguing that justice as fairness constitutes "a module, an essential constituent part, that fits into and can be supported by various reasonable comprehensive doctrines that endure in the society regulated by it."(24) As he maintains, "it can be presented without saying, or knowing, or hazarding a conjecture about, what such doctrines it may belong to, or be supported by."(25) As a purely political conception of justice, it is not thought of as true,(26) but as reasonable. And it is reasonable because it is both publicly and privately justifiable.(27) It is publicly justifiable because all reasonable persons(28) can accept and endorse it in their public capacity as democratic citizens (namely, by the process of political constructivism that employs reflective equilibrium and the original position as set forth in A Theory of Justice).(29) Justice as fairness is privately justifiable because it can be derived from each of the conflicting comprehensive conceptions of the good privately endorsed by reasonable persons.(30) As Rawls maintains, justice as fairness is not privately justifiable because it functions as a modus vivendi--a political compromise struck by individuals who lack the power to secure terms they would find more favorable.(31) Rather, it coheres with and/or follows from each of...