Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice

...Whether Rawls has succeeded is very much open to question...

...30 The Alternative: An American Spectator February 1976...

...Even a cursory look through the professional journals will show that the normative analysis, so often eschewed or even disdained by recent philosophers, is no more being left to the "first-order disciplines" alone...

...But they are instructive at another level as well, for they do give a fairly representative picture of the range of opinion one is likely to encounter among academic philosophers—indeed, among academicians in general...

...Though most of the articles are quite technical, they should not, with the exception of the formal parts of the argument of A.K...

...There are things one (or the state) just cannot do to another, regardless of how much doing that might benefit the whole world...

...Owing then to the relatively circumscribed perspectives from which these critics take on Rawls, it was delightful indeed to witness in Nozick's recently published work the second breath of fresh air to pass through the philosophical world in this decade...

...Hare and David Lyons, for example, are quick to challenge Rawls' arguments against utilitarianism...

...Most of the philosophers in this volume are concerned, however, not with criticizing these egalitarian arrangements but rather with criticizing the method by which Rawls justifies them...

...The appearance, just four years after these remarks were prepared, of John Rawls' A Theory of Justice, together with Robert Nozick's more recent Anarchy, State, and Utopia, suggests that Hayek may have been less a dinosaur than a prototype...

...Egalitarianism, that is, is for the most part taken for granted...

...Both R.M...

...egalitarian liberalism...

...Here is the heart of the moral argument the proponents of egalitarian distributive justice all but ignore...

...Lyons observes, moreover, that Rawls' principles of justice not only differ little from utilitarian principles, but will likely justify similar real-world arrangements...

...This tension between the kind of moral theory Rawls believes to be right and the kind of egalitarian world he wants to justify is the same tension at the heart of much of our contemporary political discussion...

...And because of it the world of philosophy is not a little more open...

...Now Rawls is quite explicitly trying to avoid a form of utilitarianism, despite the fact that utilitarianism is ordinarily recognized to be the moral theory that best justifies egalitarian liberalism, which again most appropriately describes the kind of world that emerges from his theory...

...Not all of the credit for this recrudescence is owing to Rawls, of course, but as the publication of his tome was a major factor, it comes as no surprise that a collection of some of the articles Rawls has prompted should now appear...

...Thus the book presupposes, if not a thorough reading of Rawls, at least a substantial appreciation of the issues he treats as'well as the manner in which he treats them...

...The real-world arrangements to which Lyons is referring are most notably those entailed by Rawls' famous "Difference Principle," which allows inequalities in such primary social goods as wealth, income, powers, authority, andthe bases of self-respect only if those in-inequalities work to benefit the least advantaged in society...

...None of this is to say that these essays are not of high quality...

...This book, the editor tells us, is a topically oriented collection of studies on A Theory of Justice, designed as a guide to reading Rawls...

...Book Review/Roger Piton Rawls and His Critics • In the introductory remarks to his 1967 anthology, Political Philosophy, Oxford don Anthony Quinton pointed out that recent philosophers have come "to accept a more limited conception of their powers and, in consequence, of their responsibilities...

...Indeed, with the exception of the essay by H.L.A...

...very briefly, philosophy has the task of classifying and analysing the terms, statements and arguments of the substantive, first-order disciplines...

...And not unexpectedly, it is at the heart of much of the discussion in this book...

...Be that as it may, political philosophy in the "great tradition" is enjoying a revival, and the air is not a little refreshing for it...

...It brings together 14 academic philosophers (all but two of whose papers have already appeared, though often in different form, in professional journals) whose contributions Daniels has organized around Rawls' "original position," his method, principles of justice, and some of the relationships between the theory and the social sciences...

...They are, and the careful reader will profit greatly from them, for they raise serious and often searching issues...

...Consequentialist principles are used to justify everything from abortion to social engineering, while nonconsequentialist principles, respecting more the traditional rights of the individual, tend rather to underpin our considered moral judgments, prohibiting judicial murder (in the face of a potential riot), for example, or the taking of property without due process...

...Very roughly, the former look to the good—the greatest good for the greatest number, say—whereas the latter Reading Rawls: Critical Studies of A Theory of Justice edited by Norman Daniels Basic Books $15.00, paper $5.95 look to the right, independently of consequences...

...Egalitarianism is wrong, Nozick is saying, not simply because it doesn't work, as many an economist might argue, but because it violates people's rights...

...Thus Daniels writes that Rawls wants to reveal the principles of justice which underlie the dominant moral and political views of our period," and that ideology, he continues, is "a form of liberalism...

...only the best justification for it seems to be at issue...

...Rawls does not simply revive social contract theory in the tradition of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, for example, but introduces in addition a number of highly sophisticated refinements of that theory...

...There is more at issue here, however, than these largely formal disputes...

...Accordingly, Quinton observed that the "great tradition" of political philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Marx and Mill had "petered out," yielding to the less all-inclusive concerns of political science and political sociology, though "an occasional magnificent dinosaur stalks on to the scene, such as Hayek's Constitution of Liberty, seemingly impervious to the effects of natural selection...

...Sen, be beyond the understanding of anyone who has been able to get through Rawls' book...

...Other contributors as well raise probing questions concerning this relationship between Rawls' principles of justice and the world they purport to justify...

...Perhaps, however, this issue can be brought out more clearly as follows: it is customary for philosophers to distinguish principles of justice as either consequentialist (usually utilitarian) or nonconsequentialist...

...This is the egalitarianism we've seen come to full bloom in recent years in such strongholds oftnlightenment as England, India, and New York, which locations are themselves instructive...

...Unabashedly libertarian, Anarchy, State, and Utopia has a lengthy section critical not only of the connections between Rawls' principles and the world he believes they justify, but of that very egalitarian world as well—all from a thoroughly nonconsequentialist perspective...

...Whether they will now continue to do so will be interesting to watch, as the (professional) returns on Nozick start coming in...

...Rockefeller and his critics to the Left: a whole world of views is all but ignored...

...Hart and, with liberal interpretation, parts of one or two other essays, these critics are all arguing from either a utilitarian or, in four cases, including the editor's essay, an explicitly Marxist perspective...

...When A Theory of Justice appeared it was immediately interpreted—both withinand without the profession—as having provided the theoretical foundation for the Zeitgeist...

...It is at least noteworthy, then, that Rawls and his critics, as represented in this volume, are working within a Weltanschauung that has since been seriously called into question...

...The result is a discussion looking rather like a debate between Mr...

...The more exoteric reviews have not unexpectedly been mixed, though the attention Nozick is receiving is alone a propitious sign...