The political liberalism of John Rawls

This handout is a draft.

The legitimacy question

In his later philosophical work Political Liberalism, John Rawls provides an answer to the following question:

When is the exercise of political power legitimate within a liberal society?

For the exercise of political power to be legitimate is for whoever exercises it to have a right to exercise that power.

One commentator on Rawls suggests the following definition of what a liberal society is: within a liberal society the state regards adult members, bar exceptional cases, as rational agents, capable of forming plans and projects for their own life and capable of responding to moral considerations; it does not treat some such people as natural superiors to others; it provides such people with basic rights and liberties, which include freedom of thought, freedom of expression and association, a right to democratic participation, a right to bodily integrity and freedom from assault, a right to private property and equal rights under the rule of law (Quong 2011: 14-15).

A rejected proposal

One proposal, which Rawls rejects, is this:

The exercise of political power within a liberal society is legitimate if, and only if, it accords with a constitution the essentials of which all citizens endorse.

Rawls rejects this proposal because if there are citizens who hold doctrines that are ill-conceived or unjust, the legitimacy of state action would depend on what they would accept, when their views should be discounted (Quong 2005: 304).

Rawls’s proposal

In order to avoid the problems with the proposal above, Rawls’s proposal is this:

The exercise of political power within a liberal society is legitimate if, and only if, it accords with a constitution the essentials of which all reasonable citizens can be expected to endorse (Gaus 2003: 179).

This proposal involves the notion of a reasonable citizen. It restricts those who matter for justifying state action to reasonable citizens. But who are reasonable citizens?

Reasonable citizens

Rawls is usually understood as using the term ‘reasonable citizen’ in a specialist sense, which may not correspond with the ordinary meaning of the word reasonable.

A reasonable citizen has the following two commitments:

(1) They accept that society should be a fair system of social cooperation, arranged for mutual benefit.

(2) They accept ‘the burdens of judgement’ and the fact of reasonable pluralism that results from these burdens.

On commitment (1)

Reasonable citizens are thought to have commitment (1) because they accept certain other points.

They accept that people possess two moral powers: a capacity for a sense of justice and capacity to form a conception of the good and to pursue a life based on that conception, which here means to pursue a kind of life judged to be worthwhile. Owing to these capacities, reasonable citizens do not regard one another as natural inferiors. And owing to this, they think that the rights, duties and benefits of social cooperation should be distributed fairly. This leads them to commitment (1).

On commitment (2)

The burdens of judgement is that, under free conditions, there are major obstacles to achieving consensus on religious, moral and philosophical matters. Rawls identifies six such obstacles:

(a) Empirical and scientific evidence may be complex and conflicting.

(b) People may disagree about the relative weight that different considerations should carry.

(d) The way in which we assess moral and political values is inevitably shaped, to some extent, by our total life experience.

(e) There are often different normative considerations on both sides of a question which fully rational people may not know how to place.

(f) Social institutions are limited in the number of values they can incorporate, which will sometimes necessitate difficult or even tragic choices.

(Perhaps burden (c) should be weakened to ‘most concepts’, because a case can be made for certain mathematical concepts being non-vague.)

Rawls thinks that, if one accepts the burdens of judgement, one should accept that there will inevitably be disagreement over the good. ‘Disagreement over the good’ here is commonly understood to mean disagreement over which kinds of life, or pursuits in life, are of greater worth. For example, some people might think that a life devoted to helping the poor is of much greater worth than a life of scholarship, while others might think that they are both good ways of leading one’s life and, moreover, equally good. To accept that incompatible conceptions of the good – and, more generally, incompatible religious, moral and philosophical doctrines – is an inevitable feature of a free society is to accept the fact of reasonable pluralism.

The constitution

The constitution that is justifiable to all reasonable citizens will be one whose contents can be justified by appealing to the two commitments which together define reasonable citizens.

According to Rawls, it will not appeal to conceptions of the good, as reasonable citizens will disagree about the good. The constitution will instead deal with issues of social justice: how rights, duties and the benefits of social cooperation are to be distributed in order to achieve a fair system of social cooperation.

(Note: Rawlsians concede that there is a narrow set of judgements about the good which reasonable citizens have to all accept, in order to be consistent, e.g. that a life of treating others fairly is better, and one is allowed to appeal to this narrow set in justifying a constitution. These judgements are an exception to the rule.)

A political liberalism

Rawls describes his form of liberalism as a political form of liberalism rather than a comprehensive form of liberalism.

A fully comprehensive doctrine covers all questions of value in one precisely articulated system.

A partially comprehensive doctrine covers many questions of value in a system, a system which may not be that precisely articulated.

(Note: a doctrine might cover questions of value but be too narrow to fall into either of these categories. Where the boundary lies is not that clear though.)

One might try to defend a form of liberalism by appealing to a fully or partially comprehensive doctrine. For instance, a doctrine according to which autonomous lives are of more value than non-autonomous lives may be used to defend the rights to freedom which are central to any form of liberalism.

Rawls’s liberalism is meant to be non-comprehensive, or free standing. Instead of appealing to a fully or partially comprehensive doctrine, he appeals to two points which are compatible with a wide range of comprehensive doctrines. For example, consider some atheists who deny the value of activities that presuppose the existence of God. Both they and some religious people can accept the two commitments which define reasonable people. A version of liberalism which is non-comprehensive is a political liberalism. Rawls formulates one kind of political liberalism.

Stability

This part will be filled in later…

References

Gaus, G. 2003. Contemporary Theories of Liberalism. London: Sage.

Quong, J. 2005. Disagreement, asymmetry and liberal legitimacy. Politics, Philosophy and Economics 4: 301-330.

Quong, J. 2011. Liberalism without Perfection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(You can find a paper on political liberalism and an objection to it here.)