Rawls's Political Liberalism and Its Foundation
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Copyright by Carla Saenz 2007 The Dissertation Committee for Carla Saenz certifies that this is the approved ver sion of the following dissertation: POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND ITS INTERNAL CRITIQUES: FEMINIST THEORY, COMMUNITARIANISM, AND REPUBLI CANISM Committee: A.P. Martinich, Supervisor Kathleen M. Higgins Cory Juhl S.A. Lloyd Tara Smith POLITICAL LIBERALISM AND ITS INTERNAL CRITIQUES: FEMINIST THEORY, COMMUNITARIANISM, AND REPUBLI CANISM by Carla Saenz, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May, 2007 To my girlfriends, including my mother, my sisters, and my aunt Marilú, for their unconditional love and support. Acknowledgements This project would not have been realized without the support of many people whom I owe my gratitude. Many thanks to the members of my dissertation committee ±Al Martinich, Kathleen Higgins, Tara Smith, Sharon Lloyd, and Cory JuhlÐ for their generous comments and enormous support. No words can properly express my gratitude to my supervisor, Al Martinich, for his guidance. The countless hours I have spent discussing my project with him are invaluable. As an academic, Al is an insightful philosopher, an acute reader, and a brilliant teacher. I cannot list the sections of my dissertation that have benefited from his sharp comments and suggestions. I have learned from him the kind of professional I want to be. As a person, he is generous, sincere, wise, and incredibly humble. He is the phronimos. I could not have had a better role model. I am very grateful to Jill Glenn. Besides solving innumerable practical problems, Jill has been an incredibly caring friend. She is a wonderful listener, from whom I have received some of the best pieces of advice of my life. I have learned a great deal from her exceptional wisdom. I want to thank the tremendous support and love of my friends. I am very v grateful to Ariela Tubert and Aseel Al-Awadhi, whose welcoming presence in the Philosophy Department completely changed my perception of graduate school. Their friendship was crucial. They made these years not just tolerable but fun. I hope that our dream of some day writing a book together comes true. Thanks to Silvina Acosta, whose enthusiasm and insight were extremely helpful in particularly hard times. Special thanks Cristina Carrasco and Anna Nogar for their decisive support in the final part of the project. Our incredibly long dissertation-writing sessions will be always in my memory. I also want to thank my mother, my sisters, and my aunt Marilú for their tremendous support, patience, and care. While physically far, they have been very close to me all these years. They were permanently there to give me the strength I was sometimes lacking of. Special thanks to Evstati Evstatiev for accompanying me in the most difficult part of this long process. His loving and caring words every night, after long and exhausting working days, were very important to me. Finally, I want to express my gratitude towards Juan Abugattas and Bob Solomon, who are no longer with us. Juan persuaded me to pursue my graduate studies in the US. Bob was initially a member of my committee. His passion for philosophy has motivated me greatly. vi Political Liberalism and Its Internal Critiques: Feminist Theory, Communitarianism, and Republicanism Publication No._____________ Carla Saenz, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2007 Supervisor: A.P. Martinich John Rawls’s political liberalism has shaped contemporary political philosophy. Three other theories, feminism, republicanism, and communitarianism, devote a good deal of space to refuting Rawls’s theory, and claim to be superior alternatives to it. My main thesis is that they are not alternatives to Rawls’s political liberalism but variations of it. That is, although these theories present themselves as external critiques of liberalism, they are ultimately internal critiques, because their own theories are built upon the basic principles of liberalism. This is not to deny that many of their criticisms are well-taken and thus need to be addressed by liberal theorists. I also argue that Rawls’s theory of political liberalism is in general terms correct. It needs however to be revised in other to solve what I take to be its main problem: Its lack of a foundation. In my dissertation I propose a revised version of political liberalism, which includes an argument in support of the political liberal conception of justice. vii Table of Contents Chapter 1: Rawls’s Political Liberalism and Its Foundation………………………....1 1. Introduction…………………………………………………………………....1 2. From Comprehensive to Political Liberalism………………………………….3 2.1 A Theory of Justice’s Comprehensive Liberalism………………….....3 2.2 The Problem of Stability……………………………………………..7 3. Political Liberalism…………………………………………………………..10 3.1 The Overlapping Consensus………………………………………...10 3.2 The Reasonable……………………………………………………..16 3.3 The Priority of the Right Over the Good…………………………....19 3.4 The Relationship between the Political Conception and the Comprehensive Doctrines……………………………………………....22 4. The Foundation of Political Liberalism……………………………………....25 4.1 Rawls’s Later Writings……………………………………………...25 4.2 A Freestanding Conception? ………………………………………..27 4.3 The Problem of Foundation………………………………………....29 Chapter 2: The Feminist Critique……………………………………………………34 1. Internal Critiques…………………………………………………………….35 1.1 Rejecting Sexism…………………………………………………...35 1.2 ªThe Personal Is Politicalº. ………………………………………..38 1.3 Retracing the Boundaries…………………………………………...43 viii 2. External Critique…………………………………………………………….49 2.1 Care Ethics versus Ethics of Justice………………………………..49 2.2 A Non-Liberal Theory?.……………………………………………54 3. The ªInefficacy Critiqueº.…………………………………………………...57 4. Final Remarks………………………………………………………………..61 Chapter 3: The Communitarian Critique…………………………………………...63 1. The Initial Communitarian Critique………………………………………..64 1.1 Conception of the Person…………………………………………...65 1.2 Asocial Individualism………………………………………………67 1.3 Universalism………………………………………………………..72 1.4 Neutrality…………………………………………………………...75 2. The (Self) Assessment of the Early Communitarian Critiques¼¼¼¼¼.80 3. The New Communitarian Critique on the Priority of the Right over the Good¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼..86 3.1 ªBracketing Grave Moral Questionsº¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼...89 3.2 The Fact of Reasonable Pluralism¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼¼.96 3.3 The Limits of Public Reason……………………………………….98 4. The New Communitarian Proposal……………………………………….102 ix 5. The Contribution of Communitarianism………………………………….106 Chapter 4: Republicanism and Its Critique………………………………………..108 1. Republican Freedom as Non-Domination………………………………...108 2. Does Republicanism Really Differ from Liberalism?……………………...112 3. Arbitrariness, Paternalism, and Domination Coming from the State……....121 4. Consequentialism and Its Problems……………………………………….127 5. Final Remarks……………………………………………………………..132 Chapter 5: A Revised Version of Political Liberalism…………………………….137 1. The Problems To Be Solved………………………………………………138 1.1 The Lack of A Foundation…...…………………………………...138 1.2 Problematic Notions and Distinctions…………………………….140 2. Revising the Theory of Political Liberalism……………………………....144 3. The Argument for the Political Conception of Justice……………………156 3.1 Larmore's ªMoral Footing of a Freestanding Politicsº¼¼¼¼..158 3.2 Discussion of Larmore's Theory………………………………….163 3.3 A Moral Foundation for (Egalitarian) Political Liberalism¼¼¼.168 4. The Charge of Perfectionism……………………………………………...178 x 5. Final Remarks……………………………………………………………..183 Bibliography……………………………………………..…………………………...185 Vita……………………………………………..……………………………………..193 xi Chapter 1 Rawls’s Political Liberalism and Its Foundation 1. Introduction John Rawls’s liberalism has shaped contemporary political philosophy. Liberalism is built upon the modern ideals of freedom and equality.1 Rawls’s liberalism was initially presented in A Theory of Justice, where it was developed as a comprehensive theory.2 While TJ’s liberalism proposed principles of justice that regulate what Rawls calls “society’s basic structure,” it was comprehensive insofar individuals were required to endorse this conception of justice as a doctrine that articulates their views about all aspects of the good life, not just political ones. Later, however, Rawls changed the scope of his theory, thereby introducing significant modifications. In PL Rawls’s theory is no longer comprehensive but strictly political. Political liberalism is developed as an answer to the question “How is it possible for people holding different and irreconcilable comprehensive doctrines to live under one political regime which all of them consider legitimate?” (PL, 12). Rawls argues that citizens converge on a political conception of justice that will govern their political life. However, no agreement is necessary on how to lead a good life. Rawls envisions a consensus that is strictly political and thus covers “constitutional essentials and matters of basic justice.” In this chapter I want to present Rawls’s political liberalism. I shall start by 1 “a liberal conception combines and orders the two basic values of liberty and equality.” Rawls 1996. The pages of this second introduction to Political Liberalism follow the first introduction in the 1993 edition, so I will refer to this as text simply as PL. 2 Rawls 1971 and 1999. Hereafter referred to as TJ. Page numbers refer to the revised