Open Left

I could have substituted Spenser or Malthus for Bentham (4.00 / 1)

Nonpartisan's reading of Rawls treats him simply as a consequentialist -  "Rawls has ensured that the de facto "right" is what most people in power think at any one time."  

Rawls's liberalism reserves a robust role for the normative that goes well beyond mere outcomes, and such a reading tortures what Rawls himself saw as his task.  

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by: wobbly @ Sat Jun 13, 2009 at 22:24:45 PM CDT

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I understand what Rawls saw as his task (0.00 / 0)

My point is that in Political Liberalism (NOT in the rest of his theory), he achieved one part of his task (accommodating pluralism) at the expense of nearly all the others.  Political Liberalism isn't the definitive statement of Rawlsian liberalism, and you don't have to condemn Rawls for this one idea (note that I describe him as "a great thinker," and I mean that).  But it's the one of his ideas that's particularly relevant because of the way Obama's using it.  Obama is stripping PL of the rest of Rawlsian philosophy, and using it in isolation from Rawls' notions of the good.

ProgressiveHistorians: History For Our Future

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by: Nonpartisan @ Sat Jun 13, 2009 at 22:43:46 PM CDT

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I don't see the use (0.00 / 0)

of labeling a political style as Rawlsian when doing so emptying Rawls's thought of the a priori.  

What you call Rawlsian could pass for any number of thinkers who discuss the problem of the relationship of democracy and representation to liberalism.  Therefore, I don't see the particular salience in your use of Rawls here.  

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by: wobbly @ Sat Jun 13, 2009 at 23:19:22 PM CDT

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