Abstract
Responding to Rawls’ pleas in Political Liberalism against appeals to comprehensive doctrines, be they religious or metaphysical, I argue that such constraints are inherently illiberal—and unworkable. Rawls deems political proposals inherently coercive and judges everyone in a democracy a participant in governance—thus, in effect, complicit in state coercion. He seeks to limit the sweep of his exclusionary rule to core questions of rights. But in an individualistic and litigious society like ours it proves hard to draw a firm boundary around issues that raise core (constitutional) questions. The standards Rawls proposes seem oppressive in effect, their likeliest yield, a kind of doublethink, encouraging many citizens to cloak their deepest normative concerns in neutered language. I worry about the means by which Rawls’ ‘overlapping consensus’ might be attained, and about the exclusion (as metaphysical) of policy proposals in behalf of broadly conceived human goods. I find it suppositious in Rawls to presume the innocence of seemingly secular arguments while placing in the stocks the religious appeals critical to many, along with old and new metaphysical arguments that may seek to bridge the gap between religious and secular appeals.
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Notes
Comparable views have been urged by Charles Larmore, Bruce Ackerman, Amy Gutman, Thomas Nagel, Lawrence Slocum, and Gerald Gaus.
Peter Jones (1995, 530) asks, shouldn’t ‘a liberalism worth its salt have something to say to those who are not already disposed to accept it?’.
Linda Hirshman (1994, 1867) writes, ‘Rawls explains that some people do not endorse justice as fairness because they have other viewpoints and experiences. But his only explanation for people’s failure to coalesce around justice as fairness is a list of the opportunities for reasonable people to err.’
Rawls (1985, 230) calls his program ‘political’ and ‘practical’, not metaphysical or epistemological: ‘it presents itself not as a conception of justice that is true, but one that can serve as a basis of informed and willing political agreement between citizens viewed as free and equal persons’. Rawls seems to entangle himself by his very efforts to skirt ultimate questions of value or fact—or even of what counts as such. Cf. his efforts to disengage ‘moral theory’ from moral philosophy, epistemology, and theory of meaning, in Rawls (1975).
Rawls (2005, 12) presumes citizens will have inner commitments to some comprehensive doctrine but reprehends public appeal to any such view. The proposed surgery belies the nexus of thought to speech so critical in persuasion and in constructive thinking.
Addressing this concern, Rawls (1999a, b, 291–92) seems almost to walk back his narrowest restraints, but he reinstates them in the end: ‘public funds for the arts and sciences may be provided through the exchange branch. In this instance there are no restrictions on the reasons citizens may have for imposing upon themselves the requisite taxes. They may assess the merits of these public goods on perfectionist principles, since the coercive machinery of government is used in this case only to overcome the problems of isolation and assurance, and no one is taxed without his consent [!]. The criterion of excellence here does not serve as a political principle; and so, if it wishes, a well ordered society can devote a sizable fraction of its resources to expenditures of this kind. But while the claims of culture can be met in this way, the principles of justice do not permit subsidizing universities and institutes, or opera and the theater, on the grounds that these institutions are intrinsically valuable, and that those who engage in them are to be supported even at some significant expense to others who do not receive compensating benefits. Taxation for these purposes can be justified only as promoting directly or indirectly the social conditions that secure the equal liberties and as advancing in an appropriate way the long-term interests of the least advantaged.’
Rawls expects that in a society bound by his rules, ‘some conceptions will die out’ (2005, 197). But how can this occur without discussion? Often, in reality, when a way of thinking or of living is deemed unacceptable in its milieu, it becomes hermetic—and thus insulated against change. A healthier model is the exposure of all thoughts, including those about core issues of public concern to the marketplace of ideas.
Rawls, in his interview with Prusak (1998), deems ‘comprehensive doctrines’ to be, by their very breadth, sectarian, and thus unwelcome to those not signed on to the world view they stem from. But if broad based arguments were so suppositious they would rarely persuade.
Responding to Paul Hoffman’s reminder that ‘political liberalism’ too should eschew metaphysical claims about personhood, Rawls (2005, 29, n. 31) admits to holding a notion of personhood, but one so general as to comport equally with, say, Descartes, Leibniz, or Kant. But would it sit as well with Buddhist or Hindu ideas?
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Goodman, L.E. Naked in the Public Square. Philosophia 40, 253–270 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9346-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-011-9346-1