[PEN-L:32566] Re: Re: Re: John Rawls

[Thad Williamson <thwilliamson@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rawls no doubt had a liberal welfare state in mind when he wrote "A Theory
of Justice" but the difference principle itself does not necessarily lead
to the conclusion that a liberal welfare state is the way to go. Even
Rawls, who was initially very naive about actually existing economic
systems and their dynamics, himself recently was talking about
"property-owning democracy" in the vein of a James Meade as the best way to
get what he wanted. Others have tried to show that institutional
arrangements consistent with Rawls's principles would have to be socialist
in character.

Rawls' attack on unjustified inequalities, including those which are simply
the result of different personal characteristics, is quite far-reaching and
worthy of appreciation, even though I am not a huge fan of contract theory
or the individualism implicit in contract models.

More generally, as Josh Cohen of MIT said today in the Boston Globe obit,
Rawls tried in a serious way to show that egalitarianism and political
democracy could co-exist and indeed reinforce one another. That is why he
is so widely appreciated by political theorists and others who are
committed to both goals.

At 10:54 AM 11/26/2002 -0500, Louis Proyect wrote:
> enilsson@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
> > He was not claiming that we should look at actually existing societies as
> > if they were the product of a social contract. Rather, Rawls asked "what
> > would society look like IF it was designed from scratch by people who did
> > not know what position they would have in this newly designed society
> > when it came into being." The resulting "social contract," Rawls
> > suggests, should be the blueprint of the society we should construct.
> > This society would, arguably, have no classes. This blueprint has NOT
> > guided the construction of the actual societies we see in front of us
> > (with classes, injustice, etc).
>
> I don't understand how you can be proposing the abolition of class society
> while still being a proponent of liberalism. Rawls's whole notion of
> redistributive justice reminds me of nothing less than Victorian era
> middle-class pieties, Charles Dickens's "Christmas Carol" in particular.
>
>
> --
>
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