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John Rawls: the Path to a Theory of Justice by Andrius Galisanka A

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John Rawls: the Path to a Theory of Justice by Andrius Galisanka A John Rawls: the Path to A Theory of Justice By Andrius Galisanka A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Mark Bevir, Chair Professor Kinch Hoekstra Professor David Hollinger Professor Hans Sluga Spring 2013 ©Andrius Galisanka 2013 Abstract John Rawls: the Path to A Theory of Justice by Andrius Galisanka Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Mark Bevir, Chair This dissertation is an intellectual biography of American political philosopher John Rawls [1921- 2002] from his early years to the publication of his classic work, A Theory of Justice [1971]. I focus the historical narrative on Rawls’s changing conceptions of philosophy: his ways of raising ethical and political questions and justifying answers to them. I pay particular attention to two aspects of the conception of philosophy found in A Theory of Justice: its claim that ethical and political positions are defended by showing that all reasonable persons endorse them in their political judgments, and its aspiration to explicate all of these political judgments in terms of principles of justice. This conception of philosophy was very influential for Anglophone political thought, contributing to the resurgence of analytic political theory in the 1950s and 1960s. I aim to understand the intellectual origins of this influential philosophical approach and thereby shed light on A Theory of Justice and contemporary political thought. Taking this historical approach, I follow the development of Rawls’s thought, contextualizing him in contemporary traditions and analyzing his numerous private papers recently deposited in the Harvard University Archives. I argue that, much to our surprise, Rawls’s conception of philosophy originated in logical positivism, the very tradition that is thought to have foreclosed the possibility of political thought in the 1940s. Inspired by logical positivists, Rawls modeled ethics on the “method of science,” and, taking ethical judgment as “data,” tried to formulate principles, or laws, to explicate them. This analogy between reasoning in ethics and reasoning in science provided Rawls with a conception of objectivity: principles of justice were objective if they explicated the considered political judgments of all reasonable persons. This notion of objectivity made possible reasoned discussion on ethical and political issues and required attention to actual political questions. Yet it also committed Rawls to a contestable view that all reasonable persons agree on a sufficient number of political judgments to yield a conception of justice. This conception of philosophy changed over the following two decades, but, I argue, it remained positivist. In the early 1950s, Rawls drew on linguistic philosophy’s conception of ethical reasoning as a practice, and in the late 1950s he was led on the Wittgensteinian path of considering political questions against the background of seeing morality as a form of life. Nevertheless, the influence of his Harvard colleague W.V.O. Quine in the 1960s brought to light Rawls’s positivist conception of 1 philosophy. Rawls continued to justify political principles by the fact that all reasonable persons endorse them in their political judgments. My historical narrative contests and supplements the traditional interpretations of Rawls as a Kantian or a theorist in the social contract and rational choice theory traditions. It therefore paints a different picture of 20th century Anglophone political thought. But, as I argue in Epilogue, my narrative also helps to illuminate Rawls’s shift to Political Liberalism. Doing so, I hope it opens new questions about contemporary attempts to define shared political reasons. 2 Sincere thanks to Mark Bevir, Kinch Hoekstra, David Hollinger and Hans Sluga Harvard University Archives for permission to cite John Rawls’s private papers The University of California, Berkeley, Department of Political Science, Institute of International Studies and the Lithuanian Foundation for their financial support i Table of Contents 1. Introduction: John Rawls and the Positivist Tradition 1 2. The Liberal Protestant Beginnings 13 3. The Early Positivist Years 31 4. Ethical Reasoning as a Practice: Themes from Linguistic 60 Philosophy 5. Theory as a Guiding Vision 84 6. Re-emergence of Positivism 102 7. A Theory of Justice 120 8. Epilogue: Positivist Dilemmas, Positivist Developments 134 ii 1 Introduction: John Rawls and the Positivist Tradition The Guiding Questions This dissertation is an intellectual biography of John Rawls [1921-2002] from his early years to the publication of his classic work, A Theory of Justice [1971].1 There are many reasons to study Rawls today. His vast influence on political philosophy stems both from an innovative political vision and a promising philosophical approach. Politically, his defense of inviolable human rights and human equality made important contributions to liberal and democratic thought. His conception of equality and the human person revived Kantianism as a political tradition. In all these respects Rawls’s vision played a central role in presenting viable alternatives to the dominant contemporary political tradition of utilitarianism. Rawls’s political vision relied on a novel philosophical framework. It is a common understanding that Rawls’s early articles and A Theory of Justice played an important part in reviving political philosophy from the desolate landscape in which it was left by logical positivism, and did so by offering a new conception of philosophy.2 Whereas logical positivism denied the possibility of objective ethical and political judgments, Rawls offered a defensible philosophical approach from which ethical and political judgments can be viewed as right or wrong, reasonable or unreasonable, better or worse. But even today this novel philosophical framework is not well understood. Too often, Rawls is seen as a lone figure, ignoring the contemporary philosophical landscape and looking back to the social contract tradition, Kantianism, and, at his most modern, the emerging field of game theory.3 Yet these intellectual traditions fail to explain the novelty of Rawls’s philosophical approach and consequently misunderstand the character of a new kind of political theory. I focus on Rawls’s philosophical approach as it was expressed in A Theory of Justice, and follow his intellectual developments with the aim of explaining how this conception came to be what it is. “Conception of philosophy” is an intentionally broad term. It encompasses two 1 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). All references are to the original edition unless noted otherwise. 2 See the introductions to Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, eds. Philosophy, Politics and Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1963 [1956]), Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, eds. Philosophy, Politics and Society, 2nd series (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1964 [1962]), Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, eds. Philosophy, Politics and Society, 3rd series (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967). 3 For example, Samuel Freeman claims that “Rawls’s research agenda was only mildly influenced by the contemporary discussions in moral and political philosophy” and that “Though raised within the Anglo-American analytic tradition in philosophy, Rawls is mainly responding to problems set forth by the major moral and political philosophers since Hobbes.” Samuel Freeman, Rawls (New York: Routledge, 2007), 12, 28. 1 suitably broad questions: What is ethical inquiry about? and What, if anything, makes one ethical judgment or argument better than another? Answers to these questions rely on broader views about human beings, their place in nature and the universe, their ability to make ethical judgments, and the nature of valuable things. Differing on these broader views, rival conceptions of philosophy also differ in their understandings of what makes ethical views objective and what needs to be argued to show them as such. Although I focus my narrative on Rawls’s changing conceptions of philosophy, I also aim to show the implications of these changing conceptions on Rawls’s ethical and political views. One’s views about the nature of philosophy do not imply any particular political vision. Even so, knowledge of Rawls’s philosophical visions allows one to understand aspects of his political positions: why he thought political arguments are rational, as well as what political questions and, in rarer instances, political positions these philosophical frameworks suggested to Rawls. For example, Rawls’s focus on the basic structure of society was prompted by linguistic philosophy’s notion of human practice, and his view that political judgments are guided by the same several reasons was drawn from logical positivism’s conception of empirical theory. Pointing to such connections, my narrative also sheds new light on Rawls’s political views. I pay particular attention to two aspects of Rawls’s conception of philosophy: its non- foundational justification and its aim to organize our ethical judgments in terms of a theory, or a list of ordered principles. Rawls rejected foundationalist attempts to defend ethical statements by reference to epistemologically certain statements or experiences. Instead, he argued that ethical argument stops when all reasonable persons agree on an
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