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JOHN RAWLS This page intentionally left blank JOHN RAWLS His Life and Theory of Justice thomas pogge Translated by Michelle Kosch 1 2007 3 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam This book was originally published in German as John Rawls by Thomas W. Pogge. Copyright # C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Mu¨chen, 1994 English translation copyright # 2007 by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 Published by arrangement with C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pogge, Thomas Winfried Menko. John Rawls: his life and theory of justice / Thomas Pogge; translated by Michelle Kosch. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13 978-0-19-513636-4; 978-0-19-513637-1 (pbk.) ISBN 0-19-513636-5; 0-19-513637-3 (pbk.) 1. Rawls, John, 1921– 2. Justice. I. Kosch, Michelle. II. Title. JC578.R383P638 2006 320.011' —dc22 2006043775 135798642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For Sidney Morgenbesser, Mensch This page intentionally left blank preface rying to introduce an important philosopher within a small Tvolume, one must keep to the essentials. The adventures in Rawls’s life largely concerned the developments in his thinking. And these I focus on—especially his theory of social justice, which occupied him for fifty years. Uniquely ambitious and illuminating, this theory is a brilliant achievement in political philosophy, the best there is. No one concerned for social justice in the real world can afford not to study it closely. My hope is that this book will lead to a better understanding of Rawls’s theory among nonspecialists. This theory is certainly worthy of a strict and detailed critique, to which I have tried to contribute elsewhere. But here the primary task is to achieve a clear understanding of it—to help the reader see it as a whole and appreciate its attrac- tiveness, ingenuity, elegance, and systematic unity. Only with such an appreciation of the theory can a critique be fruitful. Most of Rawls’s important ideas are presented in his 1971 book, A Theory of Justice. ‘‘TJ’’ we used to call this bestseller, composed in twenty years of labor, and sometimes ‘‘green monster,’’ alluding to its size and the color of its first edition. Surely no page turner; but once one has worked one’s way through a few chapters of this difficult text, one stands before an elegant and amazingly unified intellectual structure that harmoniously reconstructs the complexity of political values and principles from a single basic idea: We citizens of a modern demo- cratic society should design its basic rules in accordance with a public vii viii preface criterion of justice that purely prudential representatives of prospective citizens would agree upon behind a veil of ignorance. A Theory of Justice was a formative event for twentieth-century philosophy. It showed how philosophy can do more than play with its own self-invented questions (Are moral assertions capable of being true or false? Is it possible to know that the external world exists?)—that it can work thoroughly and creatively on important questions that every adult citizen is or should be taking seriously. Many thought, after reading this book, that it was worthwhile again to read, study, teach, and write philosophy. It became a paradigm, within academic philosophy, of clear, constructive, useful work, a book that made the profession proud, es- pecially also because its author was such a thoroughly good and likable person. In appreciating Rawls and his achievements, I have the fortunate advantage of having been his student for five years and his teaching fellow for two of his courses. Like many of his other students, I have learned greatly from his teaching and example. His class lectures were structured with exceptional clarity, yet also so rich and dense that it was difficult, even with full concentration, to take everything in. Rawls carefully read new significant work appearing in his major areas of teaching and research: in ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of law, history of ideas, constitutional history (including seminal judicial ver- dicts), and the history of the United States with its eminent personalities. He took clearly structured notes on what he read and memorized these summaries. Unlike other great philosophers in history, Rawls regarded his work neither as a revolutionary new beginning nor as the definitive treat- ment of a topic area. Rather, he studied his predecessors—Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Mill, Sidgwick, and Marx—very care- fully and tried to develop their best ideas in his own work. And si- milarly with his contemporaries—with Habermas, for example, whose writings Rawls knew well and with whom he has an extensive pub- lished debate. I did not have the impression that this thoroughness came naturally for him or gave him much joy. Rawls had no photographic memory and was not an enthusiastic bibliophile. And he often found it painful, I think, to read secondary literature about his own work. The extra- ordinary range of his knowledge and the outstanding quality of his own work were mostly due then, I believe, to an iron discipline and to an intellectual focus that drew its strength from being directed at topics that were for him, personally and morally, of the greatest importance. preface ix Rawls was unusual among the self-confident divinities of the Harvard Philosophy Department. His caring interactions with students and visitors, his modesty, his insecurity and conciliatory attitude in discussions—one could have taken him for a visiting professor from the countryside, next to his famous and overwhelmingly brilliant col- leagues Quine, Goodman, Putnam, Nozick, Dreben, and Cavell. Rawls’s astonishing modesty was not due to ignorance. He knew very well that he had written a classic that would be read for decades to come, while most other academic authors fall far short of such achievement. But the comparison he found relevant was not to others, but to the task of political philosophy. And this comparison must always be in some degree humbling. I have sketched the picture of a serious person, and this is essentially true of Rawls. All through his life, he was uncomfortable in large groups, especially with strangers, and even more so when he himself (on the occasion of a public lecture perhaps) was the center of atten- tion. On such occasions, he could seem shy or ill at ease and was sometimes still bothered by his stammer. In a Harvard lecture room, however, these problems were barely noticeable, especially after the first one or two weeks of term. By then, the audience had become familiar, and Rawls would even make an occasional joke—invariably with deadpan delivery, so the students took some time to catch on. In informal settings, such as a shared lunch with a familiar companion (or a few), Rawls could be at ease and might talk with sensitivity and warmth about the other’s life and problems or about any of a wide range of topics, such as politics, meteorology, academic life, healthy food, or a recent movie about the U.S. war in Vietnam. On such occasions, he could be animated, even playful, and really enjoy himself. Perhaps only a few among us younger ones got to know this side of his personal- ity. I got to know it only after completing my dissertation, especially through the conversations we had in preparation of this book. What impressed me most in Rawls was the exceptional intellectual and moral honesty and thoroughness with which he pursued the de- velopment of his theory of justice. Moral language is all around us— praising and condemning as good or evil, right or wrong, just or unjust, heroism or terrorism. In all too many cases, however, such language is used only to advance personal or group interests, without any attempt at justification. Justification is avoided because it forces the speaker to assume more general moral commitments that may be vulnerable to critical objections and impose normative burdens on the speaker. Rawls sought out exactly what so many avoid. Publicly, in lectures and x preface in print, he tried to connect his moral commitments with one an- other and with various empirical and methodological commitments. He thereby subjected his moral convictions, assumptions, and reason- ing to the toughest test, finally endorsing only moral judgments that had survived public critique and could be integrated into a complete theory of justice. More admirable even than the resulting moral theory is this relentless commitment to moral reflection. Rawls revised, re- fined, and extended his theory to the very end. In grasping his theory of social justice, we can understand what it means to make genuine and credible moral judgments backed by a moral conception one has fully thought through. And by appreciating Rawls’s dedication to this project, we can understand the fundamental element of being a just person. Rawls’s theory, with its vast scope and intricacies, cannot be simplified without distortion.

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