Prof: So welcome back
everybody.
It probably will take a while
to wrestle your brains back to
what we were talking about
before the break,
but I'll do my best to help in
that endeavor.
We're really finishing up the
first two-thirds of the course
by talking about John Rawls,
a very interesting figure and
phenomenon in modern political
philosophy.
We're finishing up the first
two-thirds of the course in the
sense that this is the third
Enlightenment tradition we're
talking about,
the first two having been
utilitarianism and Marxism.
 
And after we finish with Rawls
we're going to talk about the
anti-Enlightenment tradition and
then the democratic traditions.
So Rawls is an odd figure in
some ways.
If I had been here,
or if a predecessor from a
prior generation had been here
teaching a course like this in
the 1950s or early 1960s,
and somebody had speculated
that maybe a very major figure
would emerge in American
political philosophy there would
have been a lot of skepticism,
and there would have been even
more skepticism if somebody had
said,
"And they would have been
a theorist of the social
contract."
And I think there would have
been two reasons for that
skepticism.
 
One is that political
philosophy was really not
thought to be a particularly
important area of philosophy,
of academic philosophy in the
1950s and 1960s.
The people who were sort of
seen as the cutting edge in
philosophy were doing philosophy
of language,
logic, epistemology,
metaphysics,
and political philosophy was
sort of way down on the totem
pole.
 
It was a subdivision of ethics,
and sort of ethics for many
people, if you like.
 
And the notion that anybody in
philosophy who did political
philosophy would turn out to be
a major figure would have
attracted a lot of skepticism
among academic philosophers.
And yet John Rawls,
I think today,
and if you polled,
if you went around the most
prestigious philosophy
departments in the world,
not just the English-speaking
world,
today, and said,
"Who was the most
important philosopher of the
last third of the twentieth
century,
not political philosopher just
philosopher,"
and you ask that question of
people in major philosophy
departments around the world,
Rawls would be cited more than
other person,
without any doubt about it.
 
I don't have any doubt about it.
 
He'd be cited more than any
other person.
So that's one reason people
would have been skeptical that
they just didn't think political
philosophy was that important
and the sort of serious
heavyweights in philosophy did
other things.
 
But then I think the second
reason people would have been
skeptical is that a theorist of
the social contract,
and everybody knew that the
social contract,
which as you all know,
has been around in its modern
form at least since the
seventeenth century,
everybody knew it had these two
huge problems.
One was that it didn't have any
grounding in natural law that
people accepted,
and the second was it never was
a social contract.
 
We now know from 150 years of
anthropology there never was a
social contract.
 
Aristotle was closer to being
accurate when he sort of treated
human beings as inherently
political.
There was never a pre-political
condition.
And as you now know,
because we've studied Robert
Nozick,
the revival of the social
contract tradition answered both
those questions first by
replacing natural law with some
version of Immanuel Kant's
ethics.
 
So Kant becomes the placeholder
for natural law,
and on the other hand working
with hypothetical contracts
rather than actual contracts
asking the question,
"What would people agree
to?"
not "What did people agree
to under certain specified
conditions?"
 
But neither of those ideas was
central to Nozick,
was invented by Nozick.
 
Rather both of those ideas were
invented by Rawls,
and Nozick was one of many
people who reacted to Rawls.
I had pedagogical reasons for
dealing with Nozick first,
namely that his argument grows
so directly out of Locke's,
but if this was a course in the
history of twentieth-century
political philosophy of course
we would have done Rawls first.
And it's really important to
say this because Nozick's book
would never have been written
but for Rawls.
And I think the one measure of
the importance of Rawls is that
there are probably fifty books,
and I don't know how many
articles that would never have
been written but for Rawls.
You can go and find Rawls's
book in the library and you'll
find it on the shelf next to the
book just books listing the
citations to Rawls's book.
 
And so that's a very
interesting fact.
It's also an interesting fact
because Rawls is not a great in
the sense that we think of as
Hobbes,
Locke, or Mill,
or Dewey, who we don't read in
this course,
as greats in the sense that
most of those people had a view
of the world that ranged right
across all domains of knowledge.
 
So if you read Locke,
he had a view of knowledge,
a view of language,
a view of theology,
a view of politics;
a view of everything.
Mill had a theory of science.
 
He had a mathematical theory.
 
He had theories of meaning.
 
He had an epistemology,
and he had a theory of
politics.
 
Dewey, same story,
there's a whole worldview
that's worked out in every what
we today think of as
disciplines,
but for most of the tradition
we're not divided up in the way
we divide things up today.
But the people we tend to call
greats had a view that ranges
across the whole gamut of
knowledge.
Rawls didn't do that.
 
He doesn't have a metaphysics.
 
He doesn't have epistemology,
he doesn't have a theory of
science, he doesn't have a
theory of language.
He only wrote this book,
basically.
He wrote some articles which
lead up to the book and then
some things that follow out of
the book,
but basically his book A
Theory of Justice is it.
And so he's not a great in that
sense of the greats of the
tradition,
but he certainly has more
intellectual staying power than
any contemporary,
in the broad sense of the word,
that you've read in this course
or will read in this course.
 
People will still be reading
Rawls long after people like me
have been forgotten about.
 
So in that sense he's a really
important figure,
and he's a really important
figure also in the sense that
even if you don't like his
arguments,
even if you are completely
un-persuaded by all of his
arguments you have to come to
grips with him.
I'm not in sympathy with any of
his major arguments,
but you cannot work in this
field and not deal with John
Rawls.
 
That's how important he is,
and he's going to be for a long
time.
 
So that's just by way of
background and letting you know
what you're dealing with.
 
One other thing I'd say about
A Theory of Justice is,
it is not a well-written book.
 
It's not badly written in the
sense that it's unclear.
Any given paragraph is clear
enough if you sit down and
figure out the jargon means.
 
It's not hard in the sense
that, say, the technical sides
of Marx or Pareto are hard,
but it's not captivating
writing.
 
You need a chair with a hard
back to read this book,
and there's a reason for that.
 
The reason is that although the
book was published in 1971,
Rawls actually came up with the
main ideas in the 1960s in a
couple of articles,
the most famous of which was
called Justice as
Fairness,
and he circulated these
articles in the profession,
in the philosophy profession,
and he kept getting criticisms.
And eventually he had book
manuscript, and he circulated
the book manuscript and he kept
getting criticisms.
And every time somebody sent
him a criticism he added three
paragraphs to address the
criticism.
This is not the way to write a
book if you want it to be
captivating.
 
So it's got this kind
of--almost plodding quality
that's sort of at variance with
the hype I just gave you about
his importance,
but it's to do with the
composition of the book,
I mean, there's ten years of
endlessly fiddling with this
manuscript.
And I should also say that he
eventually did a second edition
of the book later in his life,
which is a substantial rewrite
of it from the first edition.
 
So he was somebody who couldn't
stop fiddling,
and it's not a trait to which I
would commend to you,
but in any event there it is.
 
And it's a long,
and if not plodding,
certainly ponderous book,
and my goal in these lectures
about Rawls is to try pull out
the main ideas for you,
and particularly the main
enduring ideas.
Because Rawls,
like everybody else we've read,
as an architectonic theorist
fails.
The pieces don't add up.
 
There are big logical holes in
the big structure.
So if you want it to be the
silver bullet or the final word
it's not going to happen.
 
Nonetheless,
there are very important
enduring insights and questions
Rawls put on the table which
have not gone away and are not
going to go away for anybody who
wants to think about the
fundamentals of political
association.
 
So what are these ideas?
 
Well, they get,
I think, mixed up to some
extent,
or hidden, or obscured,
or made to seem more
complicated than they should be
partly because of the
architecture of his theory,
partly because of the way he
does the exposition.
He has this story about the
original position,
which is his version of the
hypothetical social contract.
And let me just give you the
intuition, but I want to preface
it by saying it's actually not
important to his theory.
It's really an expository
device because what he does is
he structures a hypothetical
choice,
and then he gives you certain
kinds of information to get you
to choose a certain outcome.
 
So unless the outcome is itself
independently desirable,
the fact that this thought
experiment leads to it is of no
interest.
 
Let me give you an example
before we get into Rawls,
which is one that he himself
gives.
I'm not sure if it's one of the
excerpts you read or not,
but this is an observation that
has been around long before
Rawls.
 
He says, "What is the fair
way to cut a cake?"
Is this in what you read
anybody, "What's the fair
way to cut a cake?"
 
Probably not,
I'm sure you spent your spring
break reading through Rawls.
 
Yeah?
 
Student: 
>
Prof: Correct.
 
So the person with the knife
gets the last slice,
and what will they do?
 
Student: 
>.
Prof: But how will they
divide it?
Student: 
>.
Prof: There are two
assumptions there,
okay?
 
You say, "What's the fair
way to cut a cake?"
The answer: "The fair way
to cut a cake is the person with
the knife gets the last
slice."
What will they do?
 
They will divide it equally,
right?
That's how the person with the
knife gets the biggest possible
slice, right?
 
Right, yeah?
 
Anyone think that's not the
fair way to cut a cake
intuitively?
 
Okay, well there are two
assumptions there that are worth
bringing to the fore just for
purpose of what I'm going to say
to you about Rawls in a minute.
 
One is that we think dividing
the cake equally is the right,
you know, we've devised a
system where the cakes can get
equally divided,
right?
But do we think it should be
equally divided?
What if I added other
information like one of the
people in the room was starving
and hadn't eaten for three days,
or one was a diabetic?
 
We could add other information
which would make you wonder,
do you want to get an equal
division, right?
So the cake-cutting example
doesn't show you that equality
is a good thing.
 
It presumes that you've already
decided equality's a good thing
and you want to get the person
to choose equality,
right?
 
Then the other thing it assumes
is that people are going to
behave self-interestedly,
right?
When we give the person the
knife and say,
"Divide it however you
like.
You get the last slice,"
we're assuming that she or he
will want to get the biggest
possible slice.
So immediately we've got two
assumptions built into there,
one that equality's a good
thing.
That's the result we actually
do want to get,
and secondly that people are
going to behave in a
self-interested way,
right?
Which isn't to say they're bad
assumptions, but it's to note
that they are assumptions,
okay?
Now, Rawls' original position
has the same structure as the
cake cutting for both of those
reasons.
He has a distributive outcome
that he wants to convince you is
a good thing,
and he's going to create a
hypothetical choice situation
that will lead you to it,
right?
 
But that doesn't itself
establish that it is a good
thing.
 
You have to have some other
argument to convince you that it
is a good thing,
and I'll tell you what that
argument is,
but it's completely independent
of this expository device that's
modeled on the cake cutting.
So the expository device that's
modeled on the cake cutting goes
like this.
 
It says imagine you had to
design a social order,
a society in the broadest sense
of the word.
It will include an economic
system,
a political system and so on,
and you didn't know whether you
were going to turn out to be
rich or poor,
male or female,
what race you were going to be,
whether you were going to be an
athlete or a nerd.
You didn't have any particular
information about yourself,
whether you're going to have a
high IQ or a low IQ,
musical, not musical,
good athlete,
a bad athlete, nothing.
 
You didn't have that kind of
information about yourself,
which doesn't mean that there
could be people who didn't have
those characteristics,
right?
Just like say you had to design
the rules of chess and you
didn't know whether or not
you're going to be good at using
bishop,
better at using a bishop than
using a knight,
but you had to agree on certain
rules, okay?
 
So the rules for designing
society you're going to choose
while being ignorant of what he
calls particular facts about
your circumstances.
 
You're going to know only
certain pretty general things
like he says,
"It's a world of moderate
scarcity."
 
So it's not superabundance,
which is a good thing,
because we found out when we
studied Marx that there's no
coherent of superabundance.
 
Moderate scarcity,
it's not a developing country,
what we think of today as a
third world or developing
country.
 
It's basically principles for
countries of the sort we live
in, okay, so moderate scarcity.
 
And we're going to assume
certain basic what he calls laws
of psychology and economics,
and I think that people largely
behave self-interestedly is the
most important of those.
But beyond that you're not
going to have particular
knowledge about yourself and
your circumstances.
In particular,
sorry to use particular in two
conflicting ways,
but in particular,
you're not going to have the
kind of knowledge that would
allow you to bias things in your
own direction.
So that if you knew you were
going to turn out to be female
you could say women should earn
twice as much as men,
but you're not going to know
whether you're going to turn out
to be female or male.
 
So the kind of knowledge you're
going to be denied is the kind
of knowledge that would let you
bias things in your own favor,
okay?
 
So that's the sense in which
he's trying to be Kantian.
He calls his principles,
"procedural expressions of
the categorical
imperative."
There's a mouthful for you on
the first day back from spring
break.
 
We know what the categorical
imperative is,
right?
 
It's the imperative to choose
things that are universalizable,
things that you would will
regardless of the consequence,
so things you would will from
every conceivable standpoint.
And what Rawls is trying to do
when he says there's a
procedural expression of it,
what he's trying to do is say,
"Well,
if you don't have knowledge of
which kind of person you're
going to turn out to be in terms
of rich or poor,
or male or female,
or black or white,
or Hispanic,
or some other ethnic group,
or religious of some sort,
or atheist,
you don't know any of those
things.
 
You're going to have to think
about, what are the best social
rules for people regardless of
who they turn out to be?
And that's the sense in which
he wants to think of himself as
a Kantian.
 
So whereas for Nozick it's sort
of just a slogan,
for Rawls it's really built
into the structure of his
argument, okay?
 
And the idea of the original
position is to force us,
even while recognizing we're
self-interested,
to force us to think about
society as a whole,
to think about what would be
desirable regardless of who you
turned out to be.
 
And so then the basic way the
book,
if you had time to read the
whole book,
the basic way the book proceeds
is he starts out with this
complete veil of ignorance and
tries to get you to agree with
him.
 
In this sense it's not even
really a social contract.
He's not saying,
"Would you agree with one
another?"
 
What he wants to say is,
"Will you,
the reader, agree with me,
John Rawls,
that any rational person would
choose the principles that I'm
arguing for?"
 
In that sense he's actually--we
can't do it in this course
because we didn't read Hobbes,
he's actually more like Hobbes
than he is like Locke because
for Hobbes the social contract
isn't legitimate because anybody
made it,
but because it must be rational
to make it.
Any rational person,
says Hobbes,
would agree to give up their
freedom to an absolute sovereign
because anything else leads to
civil war and is just madness.
So it's a property of
rationality for Hobbes that
people will accept the authority
of the sovereign.
It isn't really a contract.
 
Well, Rawls is more like Hobbes
on that point.
He saying, "I, John Rawls,
want to persuade you,
the reader, that any rational
person would choose my
principles of justice over the
going alternatives,"
because his style of thinking--
people go on and on about Rawls
being abstract,
and an ideal theorist,
and head in the clouds,
but actually his actual way of
proceeding isn't that.
 
It's comparative.
 
Basically what he does is he
says, "Well,
what are the going
alternatives?"
There's utilitarianism.
 
There are other ones you
haven't read in this course.
There's perfectionism,
which is what he thinks of in
Aristotle.
 
There's Marxism.
 
"I want to show you that
my principle does better than
the going alternatives from the
perspective of being behind this
veil of ignorance.
 
If somebody else comes along
with another principle and shows
that it does even better than
mine then I would give it
up."
 
So his basic mode of reasoning
is comparative,
okay?
 
And so what he does is he has a
general principle of justice
which he wants to persuade you
of first from behind this veil
of ignorance,
and then more specific
applications of it.
 
He ends up coming up with two
principles of justice that are
the applications which are
really three principles,
so I'll go through them with
you.
But as you went more and more
into the book he keeps adding
information and lets you design
more specific institutions and
so on,
always with the caveat that as
you get more information later
you can't go back and undo
choices that you made earlier,
right?
So it's sort of like--I don't
know if you've been around long
enough to ever see Congress go
through a base closing exercise
for the military where they
realize that there's going to be
special pleading from every,
you know, say they're going to
get rid of thirty military
bases.
Every congressional district
that has a base in it is going
to have good reasons why--
"Yes, we should get rid of
30 bases,
but not the one in our
district, right?
 
We don't want to stop making
submarines in Groton,"
right?
 
Whatever it is.
 
And so what they do is they
create a commission that agrees
on the base closing nationwide,
and they have to vote up or
down on the entire package,
and then they can't start
undoing it later.
 
So this has a kind of structure
of a base closing commission
that as the veil of ignorance
starts to be lifted,
and then you discover well
actually I turn out to be female
rather than male I can't then
say,
"Oh, well women should get
certain particular kind of
advantage,"
right?
So that's the way the book
proceeds.
Now I think one other reason I
should tell you about--
or actually two reasons I
should tell you about,
concerning why this book had
such a big impact,
why this book has had the
staying power that it's had.
One is it's really very much a
book of the 1960s and '70s when
there was,
to some extent,
a crisis of confidence about
liberal democratic institutions
born of the students' movement,
and the Vietnam War,
and everything that went with
it.
That is to say there was a
generation of people who thought
we needed to have critical
standards for evaluating
government,
and utilitarianism,
which was the main alternative
around,
didn't seem to provide them.
 
And Rawls came up with this
notion that we could come up
with an independent standard for
judging,
actually existing political
systems,
and then use it to see how they
measure up.
It wouldn't have to be rooted
in natural law and all the
problems that went with it.
 
It was going to be rooted in
this universal Kantian ideal,
and it would give us principles
by which we could evaluate not
only what our government does,
but other governments.
So I think it was,
to some extent,
the kind of thirst for criteria
that was characteristic of that
era that gave Rawls his staying
power.
But then I think the other
reason,
the other reason that Rawls had
staying power was that he
changed the subject that people
who had been squabbling about
utilitarianism for 150 years had
been arguing about,
because--and again,
you know this now because of
the first half of this semester,
but utilitarianism had
basically been struggling
between two variants.
One, which we think of in the
terminology of this course as
classical utilitarianism,
we might call objectivist where
you make strong interpersonal
judgments of utility,
and the problem with that as we
saw,
and as Rawls says repeatedly in
his book,
it doesn't take seriously the
differences among persons.
You could see this in the
utility monster example.
You could see this in the
problems that we have with the
bag lady and Donald Trump.
 
You can see this in problems
with the disabled.
That if you don't allow
interpersonal--
I'm sorry, if you do allow
interpersonal judgments of
utility you can do Draconian
things in the name of maximizing
utility.
 
But if you say,
"No we're not going to do
that," and you make the
neoclassical move,
and you then say,
"We cannot even allow that
taking a nickel from Trump and
giving it to the bag lady
necessarily leads to an increase
in social utility,"
then you seem to have the
opposite problem.
So the objectivist problem is
it allows people to be used in
the name of maximizing utility.
 
The subjectivist version,
the neoclassical version
doesn't seem to allow any
interpersonal judgments of
utility.
 
Both are deeply morally
unsatisfying,
and the proponents of each one
tend to make the case for their
view mainly by pointing to the
demerits of the other view,
right?
 
And they're both right.
 
Both of these views have
serious demerits.
And so part of what Rawls does
is he changes the subject.
He changes the subject,
and he changes it in an
interesting way.
 
He says, "Look,
the truth is we should be
objectivist about some things
and subjectivist about other
things."
 
And what does he mean by this?
 
He says, "Look,
people are substantially alike
on some dimensions and unalike
on other dimensions.
There's deep pluralism of
values, yes, but we basically
have the same needs,
the same physiology.
We tend to need the same kinds
of resources,
so let's focus on resources
rather than on utility.
Let's focus on some basic
resources that everybody needs
regardless of whether they're
going to be intellectuals,
or artists, or sportsmen,
or sportswomen,
or politicians.
 
There are certain things you're
going to need more of rather
than less of,
other things being equal,
sort of instrumental goods you
could think of them as.
And let's focus on that."
 
And especially in political
theory those are a good thing to
focus on because after all,
we're talking about what the
state might or might not do.
 
And the state,
as we all know,
acts with blunt instruments.
 
This idea of the government
sort of putting a utilitometer
under people's tongues to find
out what their utility is,
apart from being technically
problematic,
nobody wants that.
 
It's morally undesirable.
 
So you have to think about the
state as something that acts
with blunt instruments and you
can only really--
if you want a realistic
political theory you should
focus on some basic resources in
the society that the state could
have some impact on.
 
So instead of various competing
definitions of utility or
welfare Rawls says,
"Let's change the subject
to talking about resources that
have the quality (a) that
they're things that we could
really imagine the state dealing
with,
and (b) that are instrumentally
valuable to people no matter
what they turn out to want in
life."
 
So that's a second reason he's
important.
Academics are not comfortable
unless they create an -ism word,
so the -ism word is resourcism.
 
Rawls actually is saying
resourcism.
Stop talking about welfarism.
 
Stop talking about utility,
or welfare, or the subjective
experiences that people get,
but rather the resources that
they have at their disposal.
 
So that's a second reason,
I think,
his views have had a lot of
staying power,
and people who don't like his
particular resourcist theory
have nonetheless embraced other
resourcist theories,
again, sort of in the wake of
Rawls,
if you like.
 
Okay, so what is the basic idea?
 
What is the basic principle?
 
It's his general conception of
justice,
of which he says "All
social values,"
by which he means resources as
I've just said it to you now,
and he's going to say that
there are three--
well, he talks about liberties,
opportunities,
income and wealth,
which he treats together.
So that's three,
and then a fourth one,
the social bases of
self-respect,
I'll come back to all of that
in a minute--
"are to be distributed
equally unless an unequal
distribution of any or all of
these values is to everyone's
advantage."
 
That is the basic idea.
 
All social values,
by which he means resources,
should be distributed equally
unless an unequal distribution
benefits everyone.
 
That is the first and most
general formulation of his
principle.
 
So let me just backup a little
bit.
I'll go through liberties,
opportunities,
income and wealth in more
detail starting in a minute.
I'm just going to mention the
social bases for self-respect
briefly and then not talk about
it anymore because of time
limitations,
and because Rawls himself never
says anything much about them,
and what he has to say I don't
think is very coherent.
 
So we'll just forget about the
social bases of self-respect for
the moment, maybe come back to
them later.
But so here's the thing,
"...are to be distributed
equally unless an unequal
distribution works to
everybody's advantage."
 
 
 
Now you might say,
"Why?"
right?
 
And that's the first question,
right?
It's the first question you ask.
 
And Rawls is not going to give
you a straight answer.
There's not a
"because"
for the reason I said to you
earlier.
His reasoning is comparative.
 
So he says, "Well,
you could say this is one
candidate principle.
 
You bring another candidate
principle like say
utilitarianism,
and we'll look at both from
behind the veil of ignorance and
see which makes more sense to
pick," okay?
 
So that's the sense in which he
has a comparative-advantage
argument,
not a knockdown philosophical
demonstration from first
principles that this must
follow.
 
So while I do want to say that
he thinks it follows from the
nature of reason that you would
make this choice,
it's only a comparative choice
and somebody could come along
with something else and convince
you that it does better than his
principle and then he'd have to
accept that.
So what he does,
and this is his resourcism in
action, is he defines these
primary goods.
Primary goods are these
instrumental goods,
these things you would,
other things being equal,
rather have more of than less
of.
And the three we're going to
focus on are liberties,
opportunities,
and income and wealth.
We'll probably only manage to
deal with liberties today,
but it'll give you a flavor of
how his reasoning works.
So, what are liberties?
 
Well, they're pretty much the
sort of thing in the Bill of
Rights,
in the American Bill of Rights:
freedom of speech,
freedom of religion,
freedom of association,
freedom, actually,
to participate in democratic
politics is one that he talks
about.
 
And his principle for the
distribution of liberties is,
I just put it up there,
he says, "Each person is
to have an equal right to the
most extensive system of total
extensive"--
I told you he is ponderous,
"...extensive total system
of liberties compatible with a
similar system of liberty for
all."
Sounds like a lot of words not
saying very much,
so let me show you why it says
more than it might appear to say
at first sight.
 
Let's take the example of
religious freedom.
So let's say,
"Well, should we have an
established religion?"
 
 
 
How can we reason about this
from behind the veil of
ignorance?
 
We don't know,
once the veil of ignorance is
lifted,
whether we're going to be
Christians,
or Jews, or Muslims,
or atheists,
or agnostics,
or something else, right?
 
We don't know that, right?
 
So how should we think about
the question of whether there
should be an established
religion?
Well, and this is where one of
his conceptual innovations comes
in.
 
He says, "The way to think
about it is from the standpoint
of the most adversely affected
person,"
because you don't know who
you're going to be.
So for any principle if you
could say,
"Well, if I was the most
adversely affected person by
that principle,
and I would still choose it,
then it starts to look like a
procedural expression of the
categorical imperative,"
because if the person most
disadvantaged by it would choose
it over the going alternatives
then presumably everybody else
would, okay?
And so this is a
misunderstanding of Rawls that
people often get into.
 
He says at one point,
"If the standpoint of
justice is the standpoint of the
least advantaged person,"
but this is not a kind of
bleeding heart liberal point.
He's not saying the standpoint
of justice is the standpoint of
the least advantaged person
because we should feel sorry for
the least advantaged person.
 
That poor bag lady and that
rich Trump, isn't that
disgusting to contemplate?
 
That's not his point.
 
It's a self-interested point,
a completely self-interested
point.
 
He's saying,
"You figure out what you
would choose in this situation
of turning out to be the most
disadvantaged person.
 
That is the standpoint of
justice, not because we feel
badly for the most disadvantaged
person,
but because we want a
universalizable principle,"
okay?
 
That's the point.
 
As I said, it's not a bleeding
heart point.
It's a self-interest point.
 
It's self-interest in the
service of universalizability.
It's to get people to pick a
principle that they would affirm
no matter what,
and that's the sense in which
Rawls thinks of himself as a
Kantian.
Okay, now let's come back to
religious freedom.
Well, if we had an established
church and you turned out to be
a member of the established
religion you would be completely
happy,
but if we had an established
church and you turned out to be
a non-believer,
or a believer in a different
religion,
you wouldn't be happy, right?
 
You'd be less happy,
at least, than the person who
turns out to belong to the
established religion.
That part's straightforward,
but that's not the interesting
comparison, it's not the
illuminating comparison.
So Rawls says,
"Think about it like this.
 
 
The question is whether or not
to have an established church,
an established religion,
right?
So think about the person who
is not a member of the
established religion in a world
in which there is an established
religion, right?
 
Versus the believer in a world
in which there is no established
religion."
 
Suppose you're an atheist,
and you have no established
religion, you're happy,
but on the other hand the
fundamentalist is unhappy,
right?
But so for Rawls the relevant
comparison is would you rather
be a fundamentalist in a regime
where there's no established
religion or a non-believer in a
regime where there is an
established religion?
 
And his argument for
disestablished religion is that
the believer in the
disestablishment regime has more
religious freedom than the
nonbeliever in the established
regime, right?
 
To make this concrete,
fundamentalists have more
religious freedom in America
than non-fundamentalists have in
Saudi Arabia or Iran.
 
So the reason to prefer
disestablishment of religion is
that if you're trying to
maximize the religious freedom
of the least advantaged person
you have to look at the least
advantaged person in all of the
possible regimes of governing
religion, right?
 
And so the defense of the
establishment clause of the
U.S.--he doesn't talk about this
example, it's my example,
but it's his logic,
right?
If you said the Rawlsian
defense of the establishment
clause of the
U.S. Constitution that's what
it would be.
 
Christian fundamentalists often
criticize the establishment
clause, particularly the way
it's been interpreted by the
courts.
 
They say it's presented as
neutral among religions and it's
not.
 
It's not neutral because it
works,
you know, people who think
there shouldn't be an
established religion,
get exactly what they want,
but we who think there should
be,
don't get exactly what we want,
so it's not neutral.
Correct, they're correct,
it's not neutral.
And Rawls actually contributes
to confusion here because
sometimes he talks about his
theory as neutral.
It's not neutral.
 
And the requirement is not that
it should be neutral,
but rather that it should give
the most extensive religious
freedom to the person who's most
disadvantaged in either system.
So as I said,
the key point is that the
believer has more religious
freedom if you have something
like the U.S.'s establishment
clause than the nonbeliever has
when you have a fundamentalist
regime.
That's the claim.
 
And so you want to give the
most extensive system of
religious freedom compatible
with a like system for all,
right?
 
And the way you get to
compatible with a like system
for all is to look at it from
the standpoint of the most
adversely affected person,
or the least advantaged person
in any case.
 
So that's the basic way in
which he reasons.
And that's why this sort of
rather empty-sounding phrase
here that is his first principle
actually has more content than
might appear to be at first
sight to be the case,
right?
 
So it's the standpoint of
justice is the standpoint of the
most disadvantaged person not
because of being a bleeding
heart,
but because you want a
universalizable principle.
 
And it's just the cake cutting.
 
You're giving the knife to the
person who's getting the last
slice.
 
You say, "Pick the system
that will give you the most
religious freedom when you later
discover what your beliefs are,
right?
 
And that is the principle you
should affirm."
And that is why a religious
fundamentalist should choose the
establishment clause of the U.S.
 
Okay, now somebody might come
along with some other principle
and show that it does better and
then we'd have to go through the
process again.
 
But so that's the basic
structure of Rawlsian reasoning,
if you like,
about principles of justice.
Okay, we'll pause there and
pick up on Wednesday.
 
 
