Ol��f�����mi O. T����w�� on Rawls and Liberalism

As a serious and committed liberal, Rawls did not position his theory as a response to the many radical tendencies of his day, because he was convinced that his position, like liberalism itself, already represented an adequate response. These challenges were, in the main, the same radical challenges that liberalism has faced since its inception. That inception did not take place in a hypothetical ���state of nature��� but rather in a real era of slave states and imperial conquest on a planetary scale, and it was these forces that spread its putatively universalist tenets around the world as it developed ever more incisive criticisms of injustice and inequality. That liberal vision had long been wedded to theories of property and popular sovereignty formed in response far more to imagined histories of political and economic inheritance than to the actual history that explained the distributions of income, rights, and privileges that liberalism and liberals promised to equitably manage. By every indication, Rawls really meant what he said about equality, fairness, and justice in his personal and intellectual life, though he came to a partial and selective understanding of what those things required of him and the structures around him.--Ol��f�����mi O. T����w�� "Selective Conscience: John Rawls���s doctrine of fairness." The Nation, December 13, 2021 issue.

Ol��f�����mi O. T����w��'s elegant and provocative review of Katrina Forrester's In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (a book I have procrastinated on reading carefully) closes with the remark quoted above. A key point of the review is that "by redirecting us from both history and sociology and premising justice on abstract game theory, Rawls���s book and its liberal vision of justice ended up promoting a political philosophy that was ill-equipped for the era of sustained academic and popular attention to historical injustice." I am generally not a friend of the Rawlsian vision of liberalism, but I am curious about the claim because there are a series of papers that have tried to develop Rawls to fill the gap on the academic side (Janna Thompson here; and Erin Kelly here, both published in Ethics). That made me wonder whether T����w�� thinks such attempts fail intellectually or whether, and more interesting to me, he thinks such attempts are unsuited to informing and shaping the "popular attention" to the topic. I have long been struck by the fact that Rawls' Theory of Justice appeared at the turning point of the New Deal settlement, and when the culture's and political (ahh) zeitgeist moved against it, Since T����w�� has a book (which I also aspire to read) out/forthcoming on the topic consider this advertisement for it. 

As an aside, when T����w�� describes Rawls' rise in biographical terms through the academy he does not mention one of the more remarkable features of it, that is, that Rawls had a quite noticeable speech impediment (something I encountered first hand in 1991 or 92). (I think this may be missing from Forrester's book.) In her remembrance of Rawls at the memorial servive, Christine Korsgaard leads with a touching story about this. The Guardian's obituary claims that "as a child, he was traumatised by the deaths of two brothers from infections they had contracted from him; Rawls later admitted that this tragedy had contributed to the development of a severe stutter, which afflicted him for the rest of his life." I mention this because the academy is not an especially easy place to function in with such a limitation. And it also would have undermined the effectiveness, alas, of a lot of more public facing political activities.

Be that as it may, the quoted passage uses Rawls as a stand-in for liberalism. In a certain sense this makes sense because from a theoretical point of view, in the Anglophone academy, Rawls is the only liberal game in town. But liberalism as a living political practice, institutionalized in constitutions and institutions, draws on sources that generally predate Rawls and have been capable of sustained creativity and re-invention. It is worth noting that when in the late 1970s Foucault turned to the question of the liberal art of government, Rawls has no place in his narrative: instead he focuses on eighteenth century sources, and (from the twentieth century) ordoliberalism, Walter Lippmann, Hayek, Lionel Robbins, and Chicago economics. (Foucault largely skips Keynes, who thought of himself as saving liberalism, and, more oddly -- given the list -- Popper.)*

The list of names in the previous paragraph hints at many polemics against the 'radical tendencies' of their day. For many those polemics were existential because they thought it possible that liberalism could collapse, and had collapsed in many places. Because Rawls is writing in the shadow of pax americana there is a complacency to his thought absent from others. For all his flaws (and there are many) Popper's Open Society and its Enemies, for example never bores (despite the lengthy and sometimes bizarre footnotes) because he takes these tendencies extremely seriously. And none of the  characters I have just mentioned are interested in state of nature theorizing or even popular sovereignty, which many of these liberals  associate with the dangers of totalitarianism and the dangerous afterlife of Rousseau's Social Contract. All of them try to imagine democracy in ways that would screen of such a doctrines.

I mention ordoliberalism, especially, in this context because in its foundational moment (recall here), as a politically potent force, on the ruins of Nazi Germany, it relatively quickly recognizes the principle of reparations for historical injustice. The Federal Republic of Germany has paid out to Israel and Jews (and some other victims) everywhere since. So, the idea that liberalism (sharing) in power is incapable of addressing historical injustice rests, I fear, on the Anglo-experience. (Of course, I don't deny that liberalism in power does a lot of evil, too.)

And if we go back a bit, to the nineteenth century, the most vital age of liberal politics, there is quite a bit of liberal complicity with racialized empire. But the most interesting liberal political characters of the age, Richard Cobden and John Bright, are implacable enemies of slavery (Bright especially), of militarism (including Britain's), and imperialism. (Interestingly enough, their names are generally only associated with free trade; but for them that was a moral and political crusade against militarism and poverty.) And it is interesting to me that philosophers happily teach and discuss Mill, warts and all, in the undergraduate curriculum, but ignore (recall) Cobden and Bright.+ And I don't think Cobden and Bright are somehow odd exceptions. They are drawing on what one may call the Adam Smith-Condorcet-Wilberforce heritage.

Noam Chomsky (not a liberal apologist), writing in 1970, in "Government in the Future," recognizes this heritage and articulates it through Wilhelm von Humboldt���s ���Limits of State Action,��� which he even treats as a kind of founder of libertarian and a certain species of anarchist thought or at least its most profound exemplar. And, crucially for present purposes Chomsky (correctly) opposes Von Humboldt to the state of nature tradition (especially Rousseau) and ideas of popular sovereignty. (In 1995 he links Smith and Von Humboldt.) Smith and Von Humboldt take state political violence (of Mercantilism) as their target.

I mention all of this in superficial form because there is liberal social theory and a liberal political philosophy that takes its own complicity with social evils seriously, and also has articulated responses to it. Nearly everyone mentioned here believed in relatively open borders in order to welcome refugees and immigrants, and instinctively rejected Rawls' "closed society." Many of my past digressions are invitations to the material mentioned above. (My friend Jacob T. Levy has been very inspirational on these issues, and his work is, perhaps, a better place to start.) I do not suggest that these responses would be compelling to the present radical tendencies and radical critics, but Rawls' shadow also blots out a lot of liberalism worth rediscovering if only to understand our recurring predicaments. Perhaps, some of you may wish to join me in rebuilding a theoretical liberalism worth having from the building blocks scattered throughout history.

 

 

 

*Foucault is also interested in radicalism/utilitarianism, but at some point that tradition turns illiberal.

+Hobson, who is well known to Marxists, also fits in this category. But he embraces racial superiority and so I distance myself from him despite the many interesting insights in his work. (Cobden is less a principled critic of settled colonialism, but often scathing about its practice.)