I believe there are subsequent editions, but I have not seen them and do not know what changes might have been made. I believe also he has published a number of essays modifying and elaborating his view on various issues discussed in the book. Whether I shall be persuaded to study these changes and take account of them will depend on the feedback I get to this commentary. No doubt many criticisms I raise here will have been raised by many others before, or anticipated by Rawls himself, in subsequent editions or essays. But then perhaps Rawls has anticipated many even in this edition, and yet they still hold. I feel that there is some underlying error in his thinking which, although difficult to articulate, is too fundamental for it to be self-correcting. In order to try to correct it, I must bring something from elsewhere to the discussion in this commentary.
"During much of modern moral philosophy the predominant systematic theory has been some form of utilitarianism." (p. vii.) He omits from consideration Hegel and all those influenced directly or indirectly by him, but apart from this omission, his characterisation of modern moral philosophy seems correct. Indeed, confining our attention to British academic philosophy circles over the last couple of centuries, the reign of Hegel-inspired idealism was but a brief interlude just over a hundred years ago, and it was very diffident, unlike Hegel, about offering any kind of systematic theory, so its omission from a historical narrative is arguably not a significant distortion. (However, I still think it needs to be mentioned in such a narrative as something which many British philosophers were reacting against.) Furthermore, it seems to have had little impact on practical politics, while, in contrast, Utilitarianism proved to be perfectly attuned to the administration of the British Empire. Rawls is not claiming that utilitarianism was always widely accepted, let alone widely accepted without misgivings, only that, as a systematic theory, it has often been the only game in town. If we go beyond British academic philosophy, into other academic subjects and other European countries, then the omission of Hegel's philosophy might still be justifiable, but not Marxism. However, I am making a minor criticism here. I am not for a moment suggesting that his work would have gained by including attempts to refute Marxism and to repel objections which Marxists might predictably make if they read his book. I think he could have learnt something from a study of Hegel, but this would have resulted in a completely different book being written, and whether he could have managed to study Hegel enough while developing his own ideas so as to produce a work as systematic as he has done is debateable.
The important point is that Rawls is very much aware of the need for a systematic approach or theory, and the dominance of Utilitarianism was largely by default rather than any intrinsic merit. Too often the possession of a comprehensive theory is identified with totalitarianism, and the reality of Marxist states would seem to confirm this prejudice. Even if Rawls had achieved nothing else in his book, the mere attempt to construct a systematic theory of justice without any whiff of descending into some kind of totalitarianism is itself an important step in the right direction. In these comments on his book I am not particularly interested in evaluating how original or even how coherent his theory of justice really is, let alone its practicality. Even as I criticise him I shall endeavour to point the way toward the construction of some kind of systematic theory of justice. Not that this commentary will be systematic in any strictly philosophic sense. My remarks here are largely exploratory, prompted by, or reacting to, the particular texts being commented on. The reader may be able to see a systematic theory emerging, but the proper exposition of it (a systematic exposition) is beyond the scope of this commentary.
"… I must disclaim any originality for the views I put forward. The leading ones are classical and well known. My intention has been to organize them into a general framework by using certain simplifying devices so that their full force can be appreciated. My ambitions for the book will be completely realized if it enables one to see more clearly the chief structural features of the alternative conception of justice that is implicit in the contract tradition and points the way to its further elaboration." (p. viii). This quotation not only backs up my remark above about the importance of Rawls's attempt to construct a systematic theory, but I think it makes it clear that the system or "general framework" is a philosophic system, not a political system (a way of organising society) or a code of morality. His reference to "the contract tradition" is a reference to a purely philosophic tradition, a tradition that only exists in and through the verbal elaboration of certain conceptions (such as a conception of justice). The contract tradition is not, for instance, propagated by continual formation and maintenance of contractual agreements between participants. Rawls does sometimes use a phrase like "moral conception" (he does right here in the Preface near the top of p. viii), but he clearly does not mean a conception expressed in a certain way, in a "moral" way, as opposed to being expressed in a verbal way. He means rather a conception of what morality is or of what is moral.
It will be important to bear in mind that Rawls's theory of justice is a philosophic system and confine ourselves to treating it as such. This may seem to put Rawls's system in an unfair position, particularly when comparing it with Kant's Critical Philosophy, or Hegel's Absolute Idealism. It is not simply that Rawls limits his discussion to political issues, and the idea of expounding a theory of everything would seem to be very far from his thoughts, but also that Political Theory and Ethics have never – at least never as yet – provided a starting point for a philosophic theory that has tried to take in Metaphysics and Epistemology. But that does not mean that a philosophic theory cannot start from within Political Theory and extend itself to Metaphysics and Epistemology. Indeed Hegel, although his main presentation of his whole system starts with Logic (which for him is Metaphysics rather than Formal Logic), nevertheless talks about his system being a kind of circle which can be started at almost any point.
(The phrase 'political theory' has a range of meaning, from a philosophical theory about politics, to theorising about things within the context of a political ideology. Note also that 'system' and 'theory' are not synonyms in the above comments, since I am following ordinary usage. A system of justice would be a political system, or, to be more precise about ordinary usage, the judiciary part of one, while a theory of justice would be a philosophic system, or part of one.)
The notion of society beginning with the formation of a social contract cannot be taken at face value in Philosophy. It is not simply that a human society did not historically spring into being by the formation of a social contract, but that the very notion of a social contract makes no sense without presupposing a society within which the contract is formed. It may be the case that there could be no notion of a society which did not involve a notion of contracts within it, even, perhaps, a notion of a joint contract of all its members, but if this is so we are faced with an apparent conflict which has to be resolved. We have a sort of chicken and egg situation: contract before society and society before contract.
(If there cannot be a person without presupposing membership of a society of persons, then a fortiori there cannot be a contract between persons without presupposing the context of a society of persons. But the stronger claim about the concept of being a person is not required here.)
The social contract was always a myth in the proper sense of that word and Rawls, like Kant, has endeavoured to extract its philosophic "essence" out of the mythological terms in which it has been expressed. To do this properly requires the elaboration of a philosophic system.
Foundation myths are a common kind of myth, where something or some situation now is explained in the form of a story about its origin in some remote past - like Rudyard Kipling's 'Just so' stories. But the myth is not really about some remote past, but something very relevant in the present, otherwise it could not be a foundation. The mythic events in a sense are happening now, as the story is re-told, and arguably the same may be said of the social contract that it only exists in being constantly renewed as philosophers appeal to it. In order to convert the myth into a philosophic form we must somehow make more explicit this connection with the present. The social contract is not simply some kind of contract our ancestors freely entered into which is now binding on us, rather, we are freely renewing it even while we are bound by it. Speculation about a remote past simply suggested a picture of this paradox being resolved, without in fact showing how it might be resolved, given ignorance of our remote ancestors, and the paradox continued as a sort of chicken and egg situation as already referred to above.
(Kant's concept of autonomy – self-legislation – and his categorical imperative are relevant to this paradox.)
Rawls is trying to rescue social contract theory by abandoning any notion of the social contract as a historical origin – an origin whose historical reality was never taken as of fundamental importance – and instead "carry to a higher order of abstraction the traditional theory of the social contract as represented by Locke, Rousseau, and Kant." (p. viii, and repeated almost word for word p. 11).
This is why the phrase 'social contract' should not be understood as being a contract. But what, then, should we call it? For Rawls, the concept of the social contract is to be replaced by his concept of the original position. His concept of the original position is not the concept of something original in any historical sense, the position being outside time, or at least abstracted from any particular time. It is original in the sense of being a first principle, arche (the first principle of his theory of justice), like the origin of a set of co-ordinate axes in space-time, or rather, like the abstraction of the origin of a set of co-ordinate axes, the particular choice of origin and axes being left unspecified.
However, it is best that we do not use the same phrase 'the original position' to refer to our reinterpretation of the social contract in so far as we disagree with, or at least withhold our agreement with, Rawls. It is best to reserve the phrase for referring specifically to the first principle of Rawls's theory, rather than some sort of synonym of 'first principle'. Hence we must choose another phrase to refer to our reinterpretation of the social contract so as to differentiate it from his reinterpretation. One possibility is a phrase used by Rawls himself, 'the basic structure of society,' though I am not here intending to use it in the same way as Rawls does. Instead of bringing in considerations of how a society historically came into being at a particular time in the remote past, we consider the essence (substantial form in the Aristotelian sense) of society, i.e. what constitutes, at any moment, society as being a society. This essence has an element of degree, indeed a more just society is in some sense more fully a society, and even one which is more able to bring itself into being as a society. Thus it is not a fixed Aristotelian essence, but rather Aristotelian in the sense modified by Darwin's theory of evolution in the obvious biological parallel. We can interpret "basic structure", not as a foundation or base which is laid down so as to be unmovable and which we then build on (no separability of the form into substantial and accidental), but rather as the Cartesian ego which is constant through changing (the ego which is doing the methodical doubting). The base is that standpoint from which society is being viewed. Any talk about the structure of society itself presupposes a particular standpoint from which that structure is being viewed.
(Descartes draws a parallel between Archimedes's notion of a fixed point which could be used to move anything, no matter how heavy, and the indubitable truth which he sought so as to base the truth of everything else, but the indubitable truth he found was not fixed in any straightforward sense of the word even as it paralleled Archimedes's fixed point.)
Just as a person cannot be viewed as a person purely from the outside, so also a society of persons cannot be viewed as a society of persons exclusively from the outside. But, once again, you do not have to accept my claim about the concept of being a person in order to accept that, in this context, the standpoint from which the society is being viewed is within the society, so that we can call such a standpoint a party to the society. This is because the society we are considering may be supposed to include every person, a sort of cosmic society or world state.
(The possibility of intelligent alien beings elsewhere in the Universe does not affect this. The very recognition that those alien beings are intelligent itself involves them being included as members of the same cosmic society of persons. Likewise the postulation of a creator god. The inclusion of non-human persons may seem to introduce complications into the notion of equality between persons, but in fact those complications are already there if we stick to the notion of equality between human persons, as is clearly seen.)
By not mentioning anything which shows how the particular standpoint differs from others, we can talk about the structure of society from every particular standpoint simultaneously. By this abstraction we do not commit our discussion to any particular standpoint, even while constantly referring to a concrete particular standpoint within society – 'the standpoint', 'the party'. One must be careful to bear this in mind even as we talk about the existence of many standpoints or parties, that they do not simply exist side by side, that there is always one that is our own. (This, for instance, raises an issue about the sense in which we choose the party we support or belong to.)
Rawls not only admits to abstractness in social contract theories, but also wants to carry it to a "higher order of abstraction". I believe that a philosophic discussion of politics requires a certain kind of abstraction, as I have just tried to outline in my immediately preceding remarks. I believe that Philosophy should discuss moral and political issues with a certain detachment. Just as the distinction between Philosophy and Physics should be maintained, so should the distinction between Philosophy and Politics. One physical theory may seem more compatible with a certain philosophic theory than a rival physical theory, but this should not be given too much weight by physicists in assessing the physical theories (and the physicists are not, as physicists, in the business of assessing philosophic theories). The philosophic implications of a physical theory are not necessarily as straightforward as they may at first seem, quite apart from the possibility that a modification that may seem minor to physicists may make a major difference from a philosophic point of view.
Doing Philosophy is a social activity and is affected by social conditions, so that it has political implications. And yet we must not close off too readily philosophic debate between people who disagree on political issues, even issues which may have a major impact on the flourishing of Philosophy.
Such detachment from particular political issues is a kind of abstraction. In Philosophy we cannot directly assess or handle a political issue; we can only discuss how it may be assessed or handled politically, or explore what its philosophic implications may be. However, this is not quite the kind of abstraction which Rawls has in mind. He does not merely discuss the handling of political issues at one remove from their social embodiment – he discusses, at one remove, the handling of political issues as if they could be handled as divorced from their social embodiment. I am tempted to suggest that he is really discussing the nature of Philosophy rather than Politics, but even Philosophy is socially embodied, and indeed it is through this embodiment that Philosophy can relate itself to Politics. (Rawls does not discuss the nature of Philosophy and its relation to Politics.) With this proviso, I have tried sketching a transfiguration of Rawls' work into 'A Conception of Truth as Fairness' which is a sort of discussion about how to organise an academic Philosophy department. However, the result seems to be rather silly, suggesting just how serious the defect in Rawls' approach is.
Another way to put this is to think in terms of a distinction between abstract and fictitious. In the "higher order of abstraction" there is included a fictitious element which is being mistakenly regarded as a level of abstraction. The social contract needed to be recast as the original position because, as a historical origin, it was fictitious. But the original position is equally fictitious, the only difference is that it is more openly so. The original position is not merely abstracted from every particular time in history, it is outside all history. Rawls refers to it as a hypothetical situation, e.g. "The choice which rational men would make in this hypothetical situation of equal liberty … determines the principles of justice." (p. 12). But there is no question of it being a hypothetical situation which may in fact arise or could ever have arisen – it can only ever exist as a construction within a thought experiment.
"The theory that results is highly Kantian in nature. Indeed, I must disclaim any originality for the views I put forward. … My intention has been to organize them into a general framework by using certain simplifying devices so that their full force can be appreciated. My ambitions for the book will be completely realized if it enables one to see more clearly the chief structural features of the alternative conception of justice that is implicit in the contract tradition and points the way to its further elaboration." (p. viii).
Rawls discusses the relationship of his theory to Kant's ideas in Part Two, Chapter IV, §40 ('The Kantian Interpretation of Justice as Fairness'). My comments about the relationship therefore belong with comments on §40, and some comments here may later be transferred there. Many of the remarks here may be modified in the light of further study of that section.
Even a cursory examination of his book shows that Rawls's theory is far less comprehensive than Kant's as a philosophic theory. The fact that Rawls elaborates his system by working out from a focus on political theory, while Kant does so from epistemology, does not in itself make Rawls's system inferior, a point which I have already made above. But Rawls has not extended his system to cover Metaphysics or Epistemology explicitly, or at least in an explicitly comprehensive manner, and he does not even discuss the distinction between Philosophy and Politics. In the course of this commentary, however, the whole range of philosophic issues may emerge. (Most non-ethical issues should turn up in Part Three of Rawls's book.)
My previous remark above comparing Rawls's discussion with Kant's suggests that Rawls's most significant failure in the book is precisely in providing a rational (philosophical) way of organising social contract theories. His achievement, I think, is in drawing attention to the importance of trying to do so, and that is itself still of great value.
His awareness of the similarity of his views and Kant's may be of some assistance in the treatment of both. However, this assistance is likely to be very limited, for he makes it clear that he has not attempted any kind of systematic appropriation of Kant's political theory, his ideas being developed largely independently of Kant. But it is possible that, as we consider Rawls's ideas more closely, we may find more patterns of thinking in common than those which Rawls might be aware of himself.
The coherence of Rawls's theory means that any criticism of his starting point, his concept of the original position, will have repercussions on his whole system. Again, even a serious flaw in his starting point does not necessarily render worthless the study of the rest of his system if a suitable modification of his concept of original position, introduced to meet criticism, can be easily extended into a suitable transformation of his whole system. The possibility of the latter depends on just how rationally coherent his system is.
The notion of the original position, Rawls's re-interpretation of the social contract, has a problem with regard to its relationship with individual citizens in society. This problem has a double aspect: its construction; and its application. Rawls is much taken up with details about construction, for instance, but these details have a considerable arbitrariness, and a metaphysical basis to his assertions is only very sketchily provided as an afterthought. (His subordination of good to right, for instance, is very revealing in this regard.) But the two aspects cannot be developed separately. They may indeed be presented separately, i.e., one may be the focus of attention at one point in the presentation, and the other at another point, but that does not mean that they can be developed separately, any more than the order of presentation need be the same as the order of development of the ideas being presented, or the same as the deductive ordering of any argument in the presentation.
In Politics, what we want is not so much a theory of justice, an understanding of justice or of what is just, but a just society. We cannot hope to work out a theory of justice and then apply it, as if these are two separate consecutive steps. Working out a theory of justice is itself an active working for justice, and in so far as a just society must know itself to be just (justice must be seen to be done) it must be working out a theory of justice. One cannot know what justice is without seeking to realise it, and a society cannot be just without seeking to know what justice is. Rawls's 'the original position' can never serve him to justify any conception of justice except one as abstract and hypothetical as the original position itself.
A more subtle point: A society does not have to know that it is a just society, indeed an ideal justice society cannot know itself as being already the ideal which it seeks to become. Thus the phrase 'justice must be seen to done' does not refer to the seeing of a completed action.
Rawls points out that he does not include much discussion of methodological issues, and that he has tried to avoid them. Here he is confused, at least from a philosophical point of view: the substantive and methodological issues are not only inseparable, but are one and the same so far as a philosophical treatment can go. The construction of the original position, for instance, is not to deal with any specific political issue, but an intellectual tool for dealing with them all. His distinction between substantive and methodological is a valid distinction but not, for Philosophy, a distinction between issues, just as the distinction between explanation and argument, or between theory and exposition, is a valid distinction, yet to discuss one is to discuss the other. It is, in fact, easy to show that methodological concerns dominate throughout his book, and this is no criticism of Rawls. Rawls has no need to apologise for failing to separate substantive and methodological issues, while I, as I make these comments, must be clear about the distinction between substantive and methodological within each comment so not to become confused, or confuse the reader.
Interpreting the original position as the party gives it some meat, concreteness, while preserving this role as a tool a tool which generates a just society even as it develops a conception of justice. Of course 'gives it some meat' is not actually done in our discussion, since the party is not specified. Hence we also satisfy the need to avoid being bogged down in accidental contingencies. ("… the choice of a conception of justice should not be affected by accidental contingencies." P. 530.) Contingency is necessary – but it would be contradictory to claim that the same thing was contingent and necessary in the same respect.
This commentary will follow Rawls's advice about which passages in the book should be focussed on, and the order in this commentary will also follow the order in his book of the texts commented on. This will make it easy for the reader to choose some passage in Rawls's book which particularly interests him or her and look up what kind of response it may have got from me. However, this does mean that comments will not necessarily be in the order in which they are written, and there will have to be some cross-referencing where more than one passage in the book is being commented on at the same time. (Unfortunately, I cannot guarantee that the cross-referencing is exhaustive, and the lack of a comment corresponding to some passage does not mean that I have not commented on some similar passage of Rawls's which occurs elsewhere in his book.)
I may decide to swap round comments on Part Two of his book and Part Three of his book. If I do so, it will be to reflect a philosophic emphasis in the treatment of the book, as opposed to approaching it from a concern with practical politics, or with jurisprudence or from a theological viewpoint.
(as specified by the sections commented on)
Part One. Theory
Chapter I. Justice as Fairness
Chapter II. The Principles of Justice
Chapter III. The Original Position
Part Two. Institutions
Chapter IV. Equal Liberty
Chapter V. Distributive Shares
Chapter VI. Duty and Obligation
Part Three. Ends
Chapter VII. Goodness as Rationality
Chapter VIII. The Sense of Justice
§77 The Basis of Equality
Chapter IX. The Good of Justice
§78 Autonomy and Objectivity
Comments on §1 pp. 3-6 The Role of Justice
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust." (p. 3).
It is not clear exactly what 'first virtue' means, particularly as applied to systems of thought, but the parallel he draws is straightforward and uncontroversial. Thus, for Aquinas, for instance, justice is a virtue and as a virtue of a society it encompasses all other virtues that society may have. (Perhaps Aquinas even uses the phrase 'first virtue' in this sense, so that my not being clear about what Rawls means by the phrase may just reflect my own ignorance.)
"Now let us say that a society is well-ordered when it is not only designed to advance the good of its members but when it is also effectively regulated by a public conception of justice. That is, it is a society in which (1) everyone accepts and knows that the others accept the same principles of justice; and (2) the basic social institutions generally satisfy and are generally known to satisfy these principles. In this case while men [people] may put forth excessive demands on one another, they nevertheless acknowledge a common point of view from which their claims may be adjudicated." (pp. 4-5)
There are three elements here:
1) The order or structure of society, the arrangements whereby people are able to co-operate with one another;
2) The principles of justice;
3) The mechanisms whereby people know that they are all in agreement on the principles of justice.
One concept – Many conceptions (p. 5)
Rawls tries to appeal to a concept of justice without prejudging any metaphysical or religious understanding of the concept of personality, of what constitutes being a person. Only by starting from a common concept of justice among a variety of social groups (not just political and religious, but all sorts of more nebulous kinds, even such as the social phenomenon of Philosophy as a whole, internationally and historically) can he hope to say anything politically significant. Rawls is making an important point here, but we must modify his words slightly in order to clarify the relationship between Philosophy and Politics. Rawls may be understood as asserting the independence of Politics from philosophies and religions. But this independence does not have to be based on a common concept, and indeed, to be based on a common concept would reduce Politics to a subdivision of Philosophy. (To show this reduction is incompatible with independence requires further argument about the nature of Philosophy.) Political utterances do not have to be based on themselves, as philosophic utterances have to be, but on social forms. Hence the emphasis is not on a common concept, but on a common social form, namely the State of the Society, and not on diverse conceptions, but on diverse politically comprehensive viewpoints on that Society (diverse political parties). In particular discussions there has to be presumed agreement about concepts to have meaningful communication, but in Politics we are not concerned with isolating discussions, and consistent use of concepts is considered only as a means to maintaining coherence in social life. Hence, in Politics, the communication between parties is based on the agreement about each other's social existence – mutual recognition as political parties.
I have developed Rawls's distinction between a common concept and a variety of conceptions to apply to Philosophy, where the distinction draws philosophies into debate with one another. There I took 'conception of Philosophy' to mean an understanding of what the concept means, which in the context of Philosophy becomes equivalent to an explanation of what the concept means, or rather an anticipation of a complete explanation. But Rawls seems to take a conception of justice to be, not an understanding of what the word 'justice' means, an understanding which differs from another's understanding, although it must be reconcilable with it because the concept of justice is imputed to be the same, but an understanding of how to bring about a just society, an understanding, as it were, of how we can know if something is just or not.
For Rawls, they have the common concept of justice if "they understand the need for, and they are prepared to affirm, a characteristic set of principles for assigning basic rights and duties and for determining what they take to be the proper distribution of the benefits and burdens of social cooperation." A particular conception of justice would then be a particular such characteristic set of principles. The concept of justice is, for Rawls, only common in an abstract sense. When Rawls writes, "Those who hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons …" he is not referring to any kind of agreement which has political significance. For Rawls, it would seem, a conception of justice may be public, but not the concept of justice. Thus, for Rawls, the concept of justice only exists for discussion about political theory, not for political discussions themselves.
I considered a modification of Rawls's distinction (between concept and conceptions of justice) to being a distinction between a philosophic concept of justice and a political concept of justice, but rejected the proposal on the grounds that one should not talk of two different concepts of the same word. Different concepts should always be referred to by using different words (or at least different phrases, since it may be appropriate to emphasise a connection by having a word in common and accompanied with different other words to differentiate the concepts).
Note: I shall maintain that I am using the same concept of a party as Rawls, despite disagreeing with his conception of a party as inferred from the most straightforward interpretation of his words. See comments below on §4 in this same chapter.
In so far as political discussion strives to base itself on common concepts (e.g. personality) it becomes philosophic, transcending the immediate social situation. This can be described as making philosophic presuppositions explicit – cashing in the philosophic content of ideologies. But this does not mean that ideologies are reduced to being philosophies. (A common concept can help, by being common, to divide people socially.)
Similarly, in so far as a philosophic work strives to base itself on social forms it becomes ideological, transcending the immediate utterance. This can be described as making the words become true. But philosophies are not necessarily reduced to being ideologies.
Instead of directing attention to the concept of justice, Rawls should rather have directed attention to the common social reality which is being differently understood by the various political parties within it. Here there has to be some degree of public agreement even as the parties disagree, extending to mutual recognition of one another as parties competing for support and for power.
Comments on §2 pp. 7-11 The Subject of Justice
"For us the primary subject of justice is the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation." (p. 7).
Rawls seems to be thinking in terms of drawing up a scheme for evaluating how just or unjust societies are, divorced from any notion of actively seeking justice, of making society more just. If he did not divorce them, then the issue of which aspects of the structure of society are to be emphasised is resolved more naturally. The subject-matter, the structure of society, should be discussed with emphasis on the way in which the society is the agent of its own transformation, that is, on the relationship between the State of the society as a whole and the political parties within it. Note that in this emphasis we do not concentrate on describing how things are or on prescribing how they should be, nor do we schizophrenically do both (i.e. valiantly maintain Hume's famous is-ought dichotomy).
Rawls tries to justify the particular emphasis he wants to give by a distinction between a conception of justice and a social ideal. "A complete conception defining principles for all the virtues of the basic structure, together with their respective weights when they conflict, is more than a conception of justice; it is a social ideal." (p. 9). Even this quotation shows, however, that the social ideal is no more than a complete conception of justice, so that the distinction can only be maintained in so far as the phrase 'conception of justice' is always taken as qualified by 'incomplete'. Justice is the virtue of the right balancing (weighting) of all the virtues, the social virtue, not just in the sense of being the virtue associated with societies of people, but the virtue associated with the "society of virtues". (For Aquinas, I am told, all the virtues can be subsumed under the virtue of justice using some such reasoning.)
"Though justice may be, as Hume remarked, the cautious, jealous virtue, we can still ask what a perfectly just society would be like. Thus I consider primarily what I call strict compliance as opposed to partial compliance theory (§25, §39)." (p. 8).
Rawls is thus primarily trying to construct a social ideal in the sense of a Platonic Ideal, indeed not so different from what Plato attempted in his Republic. He fails to notice the importance of how the society comes to be understood and changed. As a consequence, any picture he can draw of a perfectly just society could only be as a society which appears to itself as perfectly just, and so self-satisfied, rather than one still striving to justify itself, i.e. still striving to make itself ever more just and to show itself to be just. The old legal maxim, that justice should not only be done but be seen to be done, applies also to society as a whole. To do this, even the perfectly just society must distinguish itself from the perfectly just society which it is seeking to become. Perhaps we should be more cautious about attempting any description of a perfectly just society, as if we are outside it and as if it were not something we are striving for ourselves to be participating in. Perfect justice can only exist as something being anticipated, a struggle to bring about, and maintain, justice over an infinite time.
Comments on §3 pp. 11-17 The Main Idea of the Theory of Justice
This is the core of Rawls's theory. However, I prefer to make comments on the periphery of his theory first. I want my initial thoughts and impressions to flow freely, and not to become too quickly settled about what Rawls might mean or how his words might be treated. This section is perhaps the key to integrating his whole theory, and I am not yet ready to begin integrating my thoughts on his theory.
The chicken and egg situation which we have in the social contract, a contract which is simultaneously freely entered into and yet which has formed us and provided the conditions whereby we can make choices, continues in a disguised form in Rawls's notion of the original position using what he calls "a veil of ignorance". This phrase is somewhat misleading since, continuing the discussion in terms of sight as a metaphor for knowledge, what is seen continues to be seen and just as clearly, but from a distance. Thus we are talking about detachment and disinterestedness, not ignorance. To call detachment and disinterestedness a kind of ignorance is to appeal to a notion of knowledge which is still much in use in discussing personal, psychological and even social matters, but tending to be banished by any pretensions to being scientific or objective. The famous exhortation, "Know Thyself" has no meaning within the context of a scientific enquiry (unless enclosed within quotation marks).
Whether we call it ignorance or detachment, the appearance of a chicken and egg kind of paradox (as existed in the notion of a social contract) is removed without genuinely resolving it. Thus we find that the principles of justice which are chosen in the original position are nothing other than the conditions which characterise the original position itself. However much this identity is camouflaged by Rawls, it should be easy to uncover. Indeed, by hiding it Rawls makes things unnecessarily difficult and complicated for himself, particularly when it comes to justifying the stipulations about the original position.
Comments on §4 pp. 17-22 The Original Position and Justification
"It seems reasonable to suppose that the parties in the original position are equal. … Obviously the purpose of these conditions is to represent equality between human beings as moral persons, …" (p. 19).
Rawls occasionally uses the word 'party', but the concept is never the centre of attention in his discussions, and it is not included in the concordance or index of words at the back of the book. As the above quotation makes clear, he probably has only the notion of an individual citizen in mind when he uses the word, but I shall distinguish between a party and a citizen, although not excluding the possibility of a party with just one member. I shall use the word to refer to a kind of social structure within society, although it need not be well-defined as a social structure. The notion I have in mind is closer to common usage of the phrase 'political party', but without presupposing any minimum degree of organisation. Nevertheless, whatever Rawls had in mind, I will maintain compatibility with his actual use of the word.
We should be careful not to confuse abstracted forms with the concrete realities which they represent. By leaving out some of the details, symmetries are introduced into abstractions which do not represent anything in what is abstracted from. Thus, the equality between parties and the equality between human beings may both be readily conceded, yet understood as merely the spurious products of the abstractedness with which they are being discussed. It is easy to be non-racist in the abstract, while one's concrete social policy is quite different, as apologists for the South African apartheid regime amply demonstrated. This is why it is so important to examine closely the hypothetical and abstract nature of Rawls's original position.
pp. 21-2 (Rawls's "final comment")
The social contract played the same role as the utopia, even though the social contract is expressed as a looking back – a sort of a priori construction, something pre-supposed in the notion of any society, while the utopia is expressed as a future to be realised. Rawls's hypothetical original position is even easier to understand as the utopia than the pseudo-historical social contract was, although the word 'original' still suggests a looking back rather than a looking forward. The original (no play on words intended) notion of utopia was Plato's Ideal of a polis and, like Rawls's original position, it was not meant to be anything which could actually exist in time, whether past, present or future, but could only be approximated to in the world of becoming, like the straight lines and perfect circles in geometry: something to be aimed at, yet never attainable. However, I shall use the notion of utopia in the more modern sense of the just society which we are striving to bring about, and which already exists in the sense that we are anticipating it, although the full attainment involves reaching infinitely into the future. It already exists now in so far as our present actions and beliefs make its infinite realisation inevitable.
Although Rawls's original position does not exist as a situation in history, it is hypothesised as existing at a point in time, rather than being some kind of projection extending an infinite time into the future. The parties or people in the original position are determined by the particular hypothetical society which is being judged.
Rawls's notion of the original position is so hypothetical, and so abstract, as to be divorced from any temporal relation to the state of affairs in which people are using the notion. The intuitive notion of the original position enables us to envision our objective (a just society) from afar. But the value of any abstraction lies in being able to reverse it, i.e. to relate it back to those things from which it has been abstracted, thereby also relating the latter (the different instances) to each other. Rawls's "final comment" (pp. 21-2) is in some sense addressing this issue, and since I find it to be the weakest point in his thinking, I must expend the greatest effort to remedy its defects.
"It is natural to ask why, if this agreement is never actually entered into, we should take any interest in these principles, moral or otherwise. The answer is that the conditions embodied in the description of the original position are ones that we do in fact accept. Or if we do not, then perhaps we can be persuaded to do so by philosophical reflection."
His use of the word 'embodied' is interesting. The conditions are in some sense less abstract than the original position in which they are "embodied". Indeed these conditions are conditions "that we do in fact accept". Thus these conditions are, supposedly, as concrete as one can get in Philosophy: they are things he has just stated which he believes we accept, or that we can be persuaded to accept. These conditions are, it should be noted, the hypothesising and abstracting through which the original position is constructed.
The first two sentences quoted above are not directly contradictory, but there is a conflict, or at least a tension between them, and the third sentence indicates some sort of vague awareness of this, though not a proper recognition. The principles are distinguished from the conditions in that the former are what we choose when we imagine ourselves to be under the latter. However, in two respects we cannot easily separate agreement on the principles from agreement on the conditions. Firstly, the primary deductive ordering of Rawls's theory is to deduce the principles from the conditions, so that, in so far as Rawls's arguments are correct and complete, then the principles will necessary follow from the conditions: agreement on the latter entails agreement on the former. This presupposes a notion of finite perfect rationality and that every one is perfectly rational, and we can jettison these presuppositions, but the point is that there must be some coupling of agreement on the principles with agreement on the conditions if there is to be anything of value in Rawls's theory. Secondly, the conditions of the original position must themselves be principles we accept. To be more precise, when we hypothesise about ourselves being in the original position under certain conditions, X, Y and Z say, we must find ourselves endorsing, among other principles, the idea of justifying all our (moral) principles according to whether we would choose them while hypothesising ourselves to be in the original position under the conditions X, Y and Z. If arguing for, or developing, a theory of justice is deducible as acting unjustly according to the theory itself, then clearly there is something wrong with the theory. (It is like a theory of meaning which is meaningless according to its own criterion of meaning.)
Note that in the preceding paragraph I refer to accepting or endorsing the conditions as principles rather than refer to choosing the conditions as principles, since it is not a question of selecting one option out of several mutually exclusive options given prior to the selection. Once again, there is a sort of chicken-and-egg situation, now short-circuited into an absurdity, the notion of choosing under what conditions one is choosing, and hence of choosing what choices one has.
An obvious way to try to diffuse the tension would be to interpret Rawls as saying that, although there may be no political agreement about principles, there can nevertheless be philosophic agreement about the conditions of the original position. But, rather than removing the tension, this points us to further reflection on the relationship between Philosophy and politics.
Comments on §8 The Priority Problem (pp. 40-45)
Rawls refers to the assignment of weights to principles, and this brings to mind the assignment of seats to the various parties in a legislative assembly. This (the assignment of seats in an assembly) suggests that the precise weighting is a contingent matter, and the conception of justice is concerned rather with the manner of determining the weights. This shows how Rawls may be wrong, or at least misleading, when he writes:
"The assignment of weights is an essential and not a minor part of a conception of justice. If we cannot explain how these weights are to be determined by reasonable ethical criteria, the means of rational discussion have come to an end." (p. 41).
Rawls is concerned here with attacking the notion of determining weights purely by appeal to intuition, and I agree with his point, and he is not trying to rule out intuition playing some part. But in the process he gives the impression that the conception of justice may determine a single assignment of weights – a fixed ideal weighting. The assignment of weightings is more like a probability distribution: the very notion of assigning a particular probability which is neither zero nor one to a particular possibility (e.g. 1/2 as the probability that a coin toss will result in heads) implies the existence of at least one re-assignment, that the probability becomes zero or one (that the coin toss happens, and that there is a single definite result, which is either heads or tails). Also the principles which are being weighted should not be regarded as fixed either, but more fluid, just as political parties can change, split or merge.
When Rawls goes on to discuss lexical ordering of principles (p. 43) we should no longer associate what he refers to as principles with parties in the sense of organisations able to take on the role of governing the whole society indefinitely without the permanent need for coalition partners. Instead one must think in terms of a wide range of political organisations more limited in the issues they are concerned with, the extreme being single issue campaigns, or more limited in the groups of people represented, such as nationalist or minority or religious parties.
Comments on §9 Some Remarks about Moral Theory (pp. 46-53)
Rawls does not include this section among those he recommends for reading in the Preface, but I think that it is important for his methodological reflection. Despite its title and the way he proceeds within the section, as if he were covering a number of loosely connected topics, but I think that this appearance is deceptive and that it is a single sustained reflection. His discussion is very interesting, although frustrating because of the lack of clarity about the relationship between Philosophy and politics. His notion of reflective equilibrium reminds me of the hermeneutic circle, and while I have misgivings about using the word 'equilibrium' here, the same misgivings apply to the word 'circle': we are not referring to a steady state or closed loop but an infinite goal and spiral which is only a closed loop at infinity (if you will forgive the mathematical metaphor).