[PEN-L:32572] Re: RE: Re: John Rawls

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Devine, James wrote:
> Rawls' idea of justice came from the idea that one thinks about "if I
> were to set up a society and didn't know what position I would end up
> in, how would I design it?" The idea is that we should limit inequality
> because in this hypothetical situation, we might end up with the short
> end of the stick. Other values also follow from the hypothetical.
>
> My point was that this seems pretty individualistic. It doesn't
> recognize that people care about the fates of others even without doing
> the "putting myself in the other guy's shoes" routine.
>
> calling all experts on this subject! calling all experts!

The reason it sounds individualistic is because it is rooted in Kant. It
is really an updating of the notion of the categorical imperative, which
says something to the effect that one's personal behavior should be
thought in terms of a universal legislation for all mankind. This kind
of ethical individualism is rooted in the individualism of Kantian
epistemology, which posts categories as a kind of template through which
we interact with the world.

When you mix this neo-Kantianism together with the sort of New Deal
liberalism that Rawls evidently identified with, you come away with a
kind of high-minded philosophical do-goodism that probably seemed much
more palatable to the graduate students majoring in philosophy in 1967
when it appeared than the kind of linguistic analysis they were being
force-fed.

I was at the New School at the time and managed to avoid both the
linguistic analysis and the sort of home-grown neo-Kantianism that Rawls
inspired. The school was a hotbed of Continental philosophy,
phenomenology in particular.

All of these philosophies began to take on more and more of a surreal
character as I faced the draft and began working in Harlem as a welfare
investigator. I implemented my own version of Rawlsian redistributive
justice by giving my clients money out of my own pocket on a regular
basis. It was only after being exposed to Marxism that I figured out
that it was nonsensical to talk about justice without talking about
political economy. That's something you won't find in Kant, Rawls,
Husserl or A.J. Ayer.



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