<i>Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” at Fifty</i>

Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice” at Fifty is a superb volume, edited by Paul Weithman, that emerged out of a conference of the same name held at University of Notre Dame in 2021 for the purpose of celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of A Theory and the centenary of Rawls’s birth.The volume consists of nineteen essays and an introduction by Weithman, who also has an essay in the volume. The volume is divided into four parts: (1) “Rawls and History,” with essays from Sharon Lloyd, Daniel Brudney, Aaron James, Elizabeth Anderson, and Peter de Marneffe; (2) “Developments between A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism,” with essays from Stephen Darwall, Samuel Scheffler, Rainer Forst, and Japa Pallikkathayil; (3) “Rawls, Ideal Theory, and the Persistence of Injustice,” with essays from Erin I. Kelly, Henry S. Richardson, Tommie Shelby, and Laura Valentini; and (4) “Puralism, Democracy, and the Future of Justice as Fairness,” with essays from Kevin Vallier, Samuel Freeman, Paul Weithman, David Estland, Joshua Cohen, and Leif Wenar. The collection, clearly, is packed with many leading Rawls scholars, and many of the scholars in the volume are former students of Rawls. It is a truly impressive lineup and an equally impressive set of essays. Unfortunately, expected contributions from Jerry Gaus and Charles Mills were not included due to their untimely deaths.One noted omission is the lack of any direct essay on the question of Rawls’s work and gender justice, which is surprising given the vast attention that particular topic has had since the publication of A Theory. Given the line of criticism and defense of Rawlsian justice that began with Jane English and Susan M. Okin on questions of gender justice and the current exploration of the same themes, this line of inquiry is still very much alive. Nor is the question of Rawls’s theory and the possibilities for persons with disabilities explored, another ripe and vast literature. Elizabeth Anderson’s essay touches on these themes at the end of her essay, and others’ engagement with nonideal theory, in particular, raises the specter of these and similar forms of group-based injustice (race), but I do think the volume would have benefited from distinct essays on these topics. Nonetheless, the volume is an important contribution to the literature and well worth investing in. The essays are uniformly interesting and strong, and they raise or shed light on important issues for a Rawlsian approach to justice.There is simply no way to engage with all nineteen essays in this short review. In trying to find a principled basis for engagement, I decided the best way to proceed was to choose one essay from each section; otherwise, the review would amount to a reflection of my particular interests across the volume as a whole. So, on that basis, I will offer some thoughts about the essays that follow. I should first note, though, that Weithman’s introduction is really well done. When one organizes a conference such as this, you don’t really know in advance what authors will choose to write on, and producing a cohesive set of themes from across a range of so many essays can be impossible or elusive. Yet Weithman’s introduction ties the volume together in a very clear and neat fashion motivating each section and the essay’s contained therein. The introduction is well worth reading for its insights and gloss on each essay as well.In the history section, Sharon Lloyd’s essay, “Taillight Illumination: How Rawlsian Concepts May Improve Understanding of Hobbes’s Political Philosophy,” is a pure delight. Her method is to ask whether Rawls’s work can shed “taillight” illumination on thinkers of the past. Not surprisingly, she chooses Hobbes as the relevant figure and inquires as to whether Rawls’s work, in Political Liberalism in particular, can shed light on Hobbes’s political philosophy. Her investigation is, in part, prompted from a note Rawls included on his gift of a copy of Political Liberalism, where he inscribed, “For Sharon, with appreciation and gratitude for your Hobbes, the First Political liberal?” (18). Of course, Hobbes was no liberal, yet the question points to features of Hobbes’s view that are underappreciated or not fully considered.Hobbes’s political conception of the person and its implications for his account of political obligation is the focus of her arguments. One of the important upshots of her argument is that the often employed rational-choice theory and game-theoretic approach to reading Hobbes is not well founded and ultimately distorts Hobbes’s political philosophy. Rawls was well known to be an enthusiast of the history of philosophy, and his lectures, both on moral and political philosophy, are probing and informative to read. Lloyd’s essay is a nice tribute to Rawls’s love of history, and it is deeply thought-provoking on its own terms. Reading it made me wish for an entire volume of such “taillight” readings of the greats of political philosophy in view of Rawls’s own contributions.Rainer Forst’s essay “The Method of Insulation: On the Development of Rawls’s Thought after A Theory of Justice” argues that Rawls’s increasingly employs a “method of insulation” in aiming to develop a “freestanding” political conception of justice that “leaves philosophy as it is” reveals a deep tension in the view. Eventually, then, this leads to a contradiction: the free-standing doctrine must be autonomous and can only be so if morally grounded on practical reason alone, while the same, non-comprehensive doctrine must borrow its normative force from the comprehensive doctrines and thus does not have an autonomous status with respect to them. In the end, the journey toward independence from comprehensive doctrines leads to dependence on them. The method of insulation turns against itself. (149)Forst goes on to argue in Rawls’s attempt to reconcile the freestandingness of a political conception with the commitments internal to one’s comprehensive doctrine, that may oppose the political values priority, Rawls is driven to an exclusive ideal of public reason (150) (although Rawls does ultimately defend a wide view of public reason in which appeals to comprehensive doctrines are permissible with the proviso that they be given a public reason justification “in due course”). On Forst’s reading, the moral grounding of the political conception is left unexplained or in deep tension with the claim that it is from within one’s comprehensive doctrine that the political conception of justice is given full justification.Forst’s essay raises questions about the fundamental viability of a political, as opposed to a comprehensive liberalism, and a full rejoinder on Rawls’s or Rawlsians’ behalf would take an essay, if not a book, of its own. So I can only briefly sketch some thoughts. It is clear that Forst has command of Rawls’s replies to this line of critique, referencing, for example, the reply to Habermas, where he aims to distinguish various levels of justification: pro tanto, full, and an overlapping consensus. Forst seems unmoved by the arguments there. I think a full answer to this line of critique requires appreciation of the overall Rawlsian project in Political Liberalism—namely, establishing the reasonable hope of a legitimate and just constitutional democracy under conditions of reasonable pluralism. In my view (and others’) what Rawls is aiming to show is that such a political conception is conceptually coherent and not-utopian. It is true that political values must ultimately trump the values from within comprehensive doctrines for stability to persist, but the aim of the separation of levels of justification is to show how this might come about. Forst’s criticism is, perhaps, best understood as a deep skepticism that citizens will come to endorse public reasons as trumps over their fundamental values as found within their comprehensive doctrines. To this, a Rawlsian may counter that comprehensive doctrines are not fixed and unmalleable, and the hope—indeed it is a hope—is that the good of political justice for each and all carries enough weight that the parts of comprehensive doctrines that may stand in need of revision are so revised.Tommie Shelby’s “Race, Reparations, and Justice as Fairness” argues, quite powerfully, and against a grain found in Charles Mills’s work, that Rawls’s principles do, in fact, “condemn and rule out racial injustice” (199). However, Shelby probes the difficult question of rectification of past racial injustices. Given his focus on ideal theory for a well-ordered society, Rawls himself offers very little reflection on reparative justice. Here, Shelby offers an argument for reparations “from within the framework of justice as fairness” (200). The core of his argument is that under unjust conditions (such as our own) we clearly ought to work, as individuals and collectively, toward creating and maintaining a just basic structure. In so doing, we will need to develop “remedial measures” to secure the basic interests of those harmed by injustices and group-based disadvantages. Restorative justice that aims for reconciliation and repair of the damage to moral/political relationships is a central-plank policy orientation toward rectifying past injustices. Such justice may involve expressive acts over compensation, say, with the aim of bringing “closure” to affected groups. He then goes on to make the case for limited compensatory reparations to victims of “recent, unlawful wrongdoing,” if doing so is compatible with “creating or maintain a just basic structure.” The argument is grounded within “justice as fairness,” as part of a “complete conception of right” (210), where parties in the original position would choose principles of reparative justice, after fundamental principles have been chosen, as they would recognize a “natural duty” of reparation (not even a well-ordered society can be supposed to never have injustices). Shelby’s piece, along with his other well-known work, is a welcome intervention into the discourse on Rawlsian justice and racial justice.Samuel Freeman’s essay, “Reasonable Political Conceptions and the Well-Ordered Liberal Society,” contains a welcome set of reflections on the meaning of a well-ordered society in Rawls’s later work, emphasizing quite rightly the importance of reciprocity to all political conceptions of justice. Given Freeman’s rendering of reciprocity, which is authentically Rawlsian, he shows both that and why libertarianism and so-called neo-liberal conceptions of justice fail to count as reasonable political conceptions of justice. The reciprocity condition entails substantive commitments regarding the distribution of primary goods (or some alternative index) including a basic structure that “prevents social and economic inequalities from being excessive” (267; Freeman quoting Rawls).Among the fundamental flaws of the libertarian/neoliberal accounts Freeman considers are the fact that Rawls sees the basic liberties as fixed and the equal political liberties that are part of such liberties are not regarded by neoliberal views as on a par with other basic liberties, like certain personal liberties. In addition, Rawls sees “the equal basic liberties, including the political liberties, fair equality of opportunity, and an effective social minimum” as “necessary for the ideal of public reason” (270). None of these ideas are central to neoliberal views, and many do not regard public, political deliberation as constitutive of the democratic ideal, if they even endorse some form of democracy. Moreover, within neoliberal views, “lassiez-faire capitalist economic liberties” are regarded as of equivalent importance to other fundamental, basic liberties. This excludes the kind of democratic control, consistent with reciprocity, of economies that Rawls thought essential to reasonable political conceptions. Because of these and other reasons, neoliberal views cannot count as reasonable political conceptions of justice within a Rawlsian framework. Of course, no one is obligated to be a Rawlsian, and neoliberals may not much care if their views count as reasonable. But I think there are deeper implications of Freeman’s argument for neoliberal views.Beyond the substance of Freeman’s essay is another implication for those working on conceptions of public reason. Kevin Vailler’s piece in the volume outlines various models of public reason, and working within Gaus’s alternative conception of “public reason,” Vallier and others often hold up the Gausian model of “public reason” as a competitor theory of public reason. In my view—and I think it follows from Freeman’s piece—Gaus and his ilk do not have an account of public reason at all. They have an account of legitimate political authority, in the same vein has this question has been considered throughout political philosophy: When is the coercive power of the state justified? But answering this question, as they do, does not entail that they have a view of public reason. Central to the idea of a constitutional democracy is an ideal of free and equal citizenship where citizens stand in a reciprocal relationship, as Freeman shows, but this also applies to their reason-giving concerning how to use the power of the state. Their (public) reasons must satisfy the criterion of reciprocity. Thus, I would go further than Freeman does, at least here, and say not only are the views he considers unreasonable, they are not views of public reason.Although I have only given a window into several of the essays in the volume, the pieces I have engaged with evidence the high quality of the volume. The volume, and especially its theme, is a much-welcomed addition to the literature on Rawls and his work. Those interested in Rawls as critics or defenders, or even just observers, will find a depth and richness to the essays in this volume, which is sure to have an impact on future research into Rawls’s philosophy. What is clear is that fifty years later, A Theory of Justice is as profound a contribution to political philosophy as it was in 1971 and is sure to be for another fifty years.