John Rawls' Theory of Justice is the single most important philosophical
work of the Left since Marx. As even a brief search of the Internet
will reveal, it is one of the most widely discussed topics in political
philosophy. I fondly recall arguing about Rawls' theories in John Singer's
Values and Institutions class at Colgate, so it was interesting to finally
try reading it. It turns out, the revolution that Rawls created was
based on a simple but totally specious change in the assumptions about
human nature, and upon this rotten foundation he built up a shaky edifice
to justify Liberal yearnings. The book is reminiscent of a treatise
by a Medieval scientist, working out the elaborate orbital patterns that
planets would require if the Universe actually were geocentric.
In order to accomplish his revolution, Rawls posited a counterintuitive
and antihistorical starting point for the discussion of political theory.
The great political philosophers, Hobbes, Locke, etc., had used the "state
of nature" as the starting point for their theories. In this state
of nature, men were assumed to be completely self-centered and dedicated
only to their own interests, with the result that life was "nasty, brutish
and short" and only the strongest survived. But gradually men tired
of this blood sport and entered into a social contract wherein they surrendered
some personal sovereignty to a central governing entity, which, in whatever
form, would enforce a set of impartial laws in order to protect men from
one another. This is a pretty minimalist position, the social contract
and the government that it creates serve only to provide a certain level
of physical security, leaving men free to pursue their own fortunes and
taking no interest in the degree to which they succeed. But it conforms
with our intuitive understanding of human nature, our observations of our
fellow man and, most importantly, it has proven a workable basis for understanding
politics for some 300 years.
The essential change that Rawls made was to replace the State of Nature
with his "Original Position", wherein, when it came time for primordial
man to enter into a social contract, because he would be ignorant of his
own capacities (the "veil of ignorance"), he would pursue a low risk strategy
and choose a social contract based on egalitarianism; he would seek the
most equal distribution of wealth and power possible, just in case it turned
out that he was the least fit of the species.
If Rawls is right, if men acted on the assumption that they would be
one of the ones left behind once the race of life begins, then the rest
of his theory might be worth examining. But, of course, this assumption
runs counter to everything we understand about ourselves and our fellow
human beings. It is a fuzzy headed liberal's view of the appropriate
strategy for life's losers--make political decisions on the basis of the
likelihood that you are a loser and need help. But look around
a casino or a Lottery Ticket line and you will see that the losers think
that they too are winners. Look at polls about taxation levels and
you find that the lower class does not want the upper class taxed too heavily,
because they assume that they, or their children, are headed for that bracket
eventually. It turns out that people act very much as the great
philosophers expected them to; they act out of naked self interest and
the belief that they are capable and deserve whatever they can achieve.
The justice that men seek is in fact little more than an impartial application
of a set of laws that are fair to all, not an equal distribution of goods
and power, which would necessarily impinge on the freedom of all.
Rawls' great error is to try to base his theory on a generalized yearning
for "happiness". Rawls was seeking a positive definition of Man's
aspiration in the "original position", but the inevitable result, because
we will all define happiness differently, is to create a foundational quagmire
for his theories. After all, you may define happiness as having a
lot of stuff, but I may define it as spiritual enlightenment.
The classic understanding, basing the social contract on the avoidance
of death, is obviously universal, we are all agreed that our own deaths
are to be avoided, and, therefore, more sound. .
Finding the basic supposition that props up Rawls' whole theory to be
fundamentally incorrect, it behooves us little to examine the superstructure
he seeks to construct upon this error. Suffice it to say, no system
of government has ever achieved a more equal distribution of wealth and
power than has the American Constitutional Republic and it is based on
the classic understanding of human nature found in Hobbes and Locke.
'Nuff said.
I think a lot of people have got it all twisted J.Rawls was talking from a standpoint of a dichotomy as it affects the rational of an averege person in a society void of a collective social contract. Refer to Nash's equilibrium.
I actually haven't read this book in full so I can't speak to Rawl's theory. I do see at least two misunderstandings in your review, however.
First, Rawl's use of the term "liberal" has nothing to do with the political tradition of liberalism (i.e. the liberal half of the liberal/conservative divide in politics). Both republicans and democrats are "liberal" in Rawl's sense. As a philosophical theory, liberalism involves a commitment to some set of personal/political liberties, a fair and impartial rule of law, democracy, and individualism. You can read more about it in the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy [ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/ ] or any other philosophical reference source.
Second, it seems as if you may think that Rawls offered the original position as an actual or hypothetical historical circumstance. I believe that Rawls explicitly tried to head-off this particular misunderstanding. In section 3 he writes "This original position is not, of course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as to lead to a certain conception of justice." As you yourself point out, the conditions required by the original position aren't ones that are ever likely to obtain. It was my understanding that this was one of the major differences between it and the "state of nature" (which was offered as a possible historical situation).
Your objections may not depend on either of these points, but it's probably something worth examining.
As a rule the "state of nature" crowd of the 17th and 18th centuries have been largely discredited (largely due to ignorance and the sort of subjective analysis that severely bias such); we read them because they are a starting point in the discussion, not because their statements are especially definitive or truthful. To be frank Hobbes would be aghast at the sort of society we live in and the liberty we enjoy; he did not view human nature as allowing for such without open civil war.
"Suffice it to say, no system of government has ever achieved a more equal distribution of wealth and power than has the American Constitutional Republic and it is based on the classic understanding of human nature found in Hobbes and Locke."
Actually, it is well substantiated by this point that Montesquieu's vision of what such a republic is closer to the truth, given Locke's combination of the executive and judicial branches into one body, as opposed to the three branches of government found in the US, French, etc. systems. Locke accepted only two branches because the judicial branch in England at the time was mixed into both the executive and legislative branches (and I believe this remains the case today). Also, the work of Samuel Harrington was as influential or more so than Locke in the 18th century, especially in America. You should read Oceana sometime. As to the idea of what they thought of human nature, well that's equally an equally problematic claim. Its clear from the Federalist Papers that Madison thought that human nature was corruptible, but it did not rise to the level of Hobbes' contempt for humanity, nor did Madison feel that humans required a "leviathan" to keep men in order; that they could this on their own if the institutions were properly constructed. Indeed, the Hobbesian mental universe and form of government is ultimately radically different from the likes of what Madison had in mind, which is of course why America doesn't have a state church as Hobbes insisted upon. Your thoughts reflect an old, simplistic and rather discredited view on the nature of these things.
The thrust of your review is that Rawls' intuition about mankind's nature at the dawn of time is errant, as compared with Hobbes'. It seems to me, though, that what our ancestors felt and sought in the dim recesses of history is mostly irrelevant to the task of generating a workable (fair, just, stable, pick some or all) system of justice or government.
I wasn't around then, and my own desires, choices, and nature were formed recently, based on the environment I found in the 70s and 80s. A proper system of Justice/Government, or treatise thereupon should start with that, as extended to all 7 billion persons around now, or a suitable subset.
Rawls' bookhas to me one major flaw. I realized it one day about 25 years ago when I was in Dallas, working on a deal and eating lunch with the lawyer from the other side at the Petroleum Club. As I looked around the room, I had a vision. Rawls had elaborated a procedural mechanism that would produce the kind of ideal society that the members of the Harvard faculty club would agree to, i.e. Sweden, they were, after all, men whose lives had been tied to the security of tenure contracts guaranteed by billion dollar endowments. The members of the Petroleum Club, most of whom had been rich and broke a couple of times during the last ten years, probably had different risk/reward preferences and would agree on a different kind of ideal society, say Texas but with without those damn fool yankees in congress.
One way to think of these books is as the manifestoes of the chattering classes. As political theory, they are lame. They completely overlook the interests and ambitions of non-intellectuals, who may very well be better at field striping and cleaning their rifles than are the professoriate. After Machiavelli, they are all drunks in a bar. But the recent ones are drunker and have spent more time inhaling their own vapors.
