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Rawls, Political Liberalism, and Moral Virtues Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2009 Rawls, Political Liberalism, and Moral Virtues Joseph Alava Kabari Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Kabari, Joseph Alava, "Rawls, Political Liberalism, and Moral Virtues" (2009). Dissertations. 206. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/206 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2009 Joseph Alava Kabari LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO JOHN RAWLS, POLITICAL, LIBERALISM AND MORAL VIRTUES A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY JOSEPH ALAVA KABARI CHICAGO, ILLINOIS DECEMBER 2009 Copyright by Joseph Alava Kabari, 2009 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS So many people have helped, directly or indirectly, to make my journey a story of success. For the sake of brevity I can only acknowledge a few representative individuals and groups here. I begin by thanking my dissertation director, Professor David Ingram (and family). At a point when the going was getting rather rough, he graciously took expert control of the situation and guided me to the desired goal with dedication. I also very much thank the other members of my committee, Professors Thomas Wren and David Schweickart, who showed much needed understanding, patience, and encouragement during the more trying stretches of the journey. I acknowledge the many occasions when other faculty of the philosophy department, especially Professors Paul Moser, Andrew Cutrofello, Adriaan Peperzak, and Dan Hartnett, S.J., also gave me good advice and support. Among my fellow graduate students who morally encouraged and helped me a lot along the way, I particularly owe much gratitude to Brian Buckley and Fr. Dariusz Dankowski, members of our small ‘Rawlsian Group.’ Our group discussions of Rawls’s works were of immense help to me. Fr. Dariusz Dankowski, S.J., was the one who, through his many invitations of our group to the Jesuit Community, created the comfortable and peaceful environment for some very helpful, productive, reflections on Rawls’s often quite challenging texts. iii My diocese in Nigeria has played a very crucial role in my educational development. Here, my special thanks go to Most Rev. Dr. Alexius Makozi, the Bishop of Port Harcourt Diocese. Continuing from where others before him had led me, he most generously encouraged me to convert my sabbatical leave into a study leave that has now enabled me to happily reach the terminal stage of my formal intellectual formation. His friendship and understanding as well as his initial moral and financial supports were crucial to my peace of mind, strength, and stability throughout this journey. Where would we be without good friends? Among those friends whose care, generosity, and support have been of inestimable impact are: first, Dr. Vincent Idemyor and Ubong Ituen, whose family in Chicago not only provided accommodation and care at the very beginning, but have continued to provide needed help throughout the pursuit of my goal at LUC. Next, is Rev. Fr. Donatus Chukwu whose company and support, intellectual and more, have been truly invaluable. Furthermore, I thank my other Nigerian friends, individuals and families, in Chicagoland area as well as the Evanston Area Black Catholics at St. Nicholas Catholic Church, Evanston, Illinois, whose contributions, (material, moral, and spiritual), to my success have been, individually and collectively, immeasurable. I acknowledge the kindness of Fr. Bob Oldershaw, the Ehrenberg family and the parishioners of St. Nicks for the benefits of residency and other financial supports during the days of course work and after. I also thank the Catholic Bishop of Joliet Diocese, Illinois, Most Rev. Peter Sartain as well as the pastor and the parishioners of St. Elizabeth Seton Church, Naperville, Illinois, who not only provided me with a needed friendly faith iv community, but also gave me a part-time employment during the actual writing of the project. This generous placement gave me the comfort and the financial stability that proved most crucial for the completion of my dissertation. Special thanks must go the parish office staff for their secretarial supports. v To my late father Amos Kabari TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix ABSTRACT xi INTRODUCTION 1 The Problem in Rawls 1 Towards a Resolution of the Problem 10 Importance of the Project 27 Elements of the Argument 29 CHAPTER ONE: MORAL VIRTUES AND THE POLITICAL SPHERE 32 The Concept of Moral Virtue 33 Virtue Acquisition and the Political Sphere 52 The Human Good, Virtue, and the Political Sphere 60 CHAPTER TWO: RAWLS’S POLITICAL LIBERALISM 75 New Focus for Justice as Fairness 75 Bounds and Features of the Political Domain 80 Option for a Political Conception of Justice 93 Political Liberalism, Values and the Virtues 104 CHAPTER THREE: CHALLENGES TO RAWLS ON MORAL VIRTUES 115 Critique of Liberal Moral Philosophy 116 MacIntyre’s General Critique Unconvincing 123 Failure of Aspects of MacIntyre’s Critique 132 Taylor on Modern Morality 145 CHAPTER FOUR: RAWLS: FOUNDATIONS, LIBERAL VIRTUES, AND COMMUNITY 152 Rawls and Foundations 153 Liberalisms and Moral Virtues 166 Universal and Communitarian Approaches 181 CHAPTER FIVE: RAWLS’S VISION OF MORAL VIRTUES 195 Rawls’s Conception of Moral Virtues 196 Acquisition of the Moral Virtues 215 The Good and Role of Moral Virtues 224 vii CHAPTER SIX: RE-READING RAWLS 239 Variant Conceptions of Practical Reason 240 Practical Reason and Moral Virtues 249 Universal Principles and Particular Actions 257 Principles of Justice and Virtuous Actions 261 General Summary and Conclusion 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 276 VITA 289 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AV After Virtue CD Comprehensive Doctrine CP Collected Papers DE Deontological Ethics DV Doctrine of Virtue GW Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals JF Justice as Fairness JF:R Justice as Fairness : A Restatement LOP Law of Peoples NE Nicomachean Ethics OP Original Position PCJ Political Conception of Justice PL Political Liberalism POL The Politics SOJ Sense of Justice SS Sources of the Self ST Summa Theologica TE Teleological Ethics TJ A Theory of Justice ix TRV Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry VE Virtue Ethics WJWR Whose Justice? Whose Rationality? WOS Well-Ordered Society x ABSTRACT The argument of this dissertation is that John Rawls, although primarily concerned with social and political justice and not directly with virtue ethics, gives a major place and role to the moral virtues in his theory of political liberalism, as in all of his system of justice as fairness. Some philosophers, mostly of the Aristotelian-Aquinian traditions, have generally lamented what they regard as the abandonment of the moral virtues by modern and contemporary, liberal, moral philosophers. The liberals, the critics claim, turn instead to the principles of justice and right, and to the language of moral obligations and of human rights. This perception of contemporary, liberal, moral philosophy as a rejection or marginalization of the virtues of character affects their readings of Rawls’s works. Contrary to these critics, I argue that Rawls sees the moral virtues as crucially important in a liberal democratic political society. He clearly includes the virtues among the conceptions or the forms of the good in his major works, especially A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism. But his approach, the structure of his practical reasoning, I argue, is in some ways different from those of his Aristotelian opponents because he stands the Kantian tradition. Rawls argues that moral virtues, especially the political virtues, are derived independently of comprehensive doctrines. They are, rather, essential requirements of xi human practical reason and reasonableness. And while presupposing the self-oriented virtues, Rawls pays more attention to the social-political virtues. Defining the virtues generally as good and stable qualities of character necessary for adherence to the principles of justice and right in a well-ordered society of justice as fairness, he sums them all up in what he calls “the sense of justice.” In Rawls’s works, both ‘the principles’ and ‘the sense of justice’ are two sides of the same coin: they are two interwoven dimensions of our moral nature, and are together required for moral- political consensus, social cooperation, unity, and stability. xii INTRODUCTION The Problem in Rawls Recent philosophy1 has been full of worries about a purported abandonment of the moral virtues by modern liberal moral and social philosophers. The claim is that in place of the virtues of character modern and, especially, contemporary liberal moralists have turned to principles and rules of justice and the language of human rights in pursuit of the sort of social control that virtue ethics made possible hitherto. Such a claim about the rejection of the moral virtues by modern liberal philosophers is questionable because it is an exaggeration. However, my concern in this project is not with the whole of modern and contemporary moral and social philosophy but with one of its key figures, John Rawls.2 He has been one of the most liberal if not the greatest liberal moral, social, and political philosopher in contemporary Anglophone philosophy. And even here, my main focus is on his theory of political liberalism and its relation to the moral virtues. 1Some of the most prominent critics of modern (liberal) moral philosophy include G. E. M. Anscombe, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” in Virtue Ethics, ed. Roger Crisp and Michael Slote, Oxford Readings in Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 1997), 26-44; Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd.
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