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RAWLS AND THE DEMS. I have no clue who in the Democratic Party is wandering around justifying their policies based on Rawlsian appeals, but if any such people do indeed exist, Linda Hirschman is right that they should probably stop. But I don't think they exist. References to Rawls are the sort of rhetorical approach I associate with libertarians more than actual political types. Democrats were fighting for an expanded social safety net and a more equal society before the 1971 publication of Rawls' A Theory of Justice, and they were fighting for much the same things, in much the same terms, after 1971. Indeed, Mike Tomasky's "Common Good" approach, which Hirschman identifies as an alternative to the tired Rawlsian rhetoric of yesteryear, is actually a throwback to rhetoric from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, something Mike acknowledges explicitly in his article.
There's lots to criticize about Democrats, to be sure. But an over-reliance on on philosophical first principles just ain't on the list.
--Ezra Klein
COMMENTS (4)
The purpose of Rawls' political philosophy is not to change the world, but to understand it.
Posted by: matt | July 24, 2007 7:43 PM
Right. Not everything is created with the goal of attracting votes from undecideds.
Posted by: CJR | July 24, 2007 7:59 PM
It's time for publications like TNR and TAP to stop publishing Linda Hirshman. This is getting ridiculous. For example, in the piece linked above, she writes, "Even now, years later, when the important philosopher Richard Rorty died, much of the eulogizing centered around his fidelity to Rawls!"
I read a dozen or more of the Rorty eulogies, and could not recall a mention of his "fidelity to Rawls." Indeed, they moved in totally different universes, and the "postmodern ironic liberalism" that Rorty called for in his political work has, like, less than nothing in common with the totally modern and non-ironic liberalism of Rawls.
So I clicked through to Hirshman's link, which was to another TNR article, in this case Damon Linker's provocative critique of Rorty. In which the only mention of Rawls is this:
"Liberals [would] do better to follow the example of less dogmatic philosophies of liberalism--those found in the essays of Isaiah Berlin, in the later writings of John Rawls, and even in the books of conservative theorist Michael Oakeshott. These authors, who are more accurately described as pluralists than pragmatists, defended a form of liberalism that Rawls called "political, not metaphysical." They meant that liberalism, properly understood, takes no position on metaphysics--either for or (in Rorty's case) against it."
In other words, Rawls is an alternative to Rorty's pragmatism, hardly fidelity to it.
To paraphrase Brad DeLong, why oh why can't we have philosophy professors with some respect for what others have written?
Posted by: Mark Schmitt | July 24, 2007 11:44 PM
I've been in politics for 40 years and I don't know who Rawls or Rorty is or was. And I don't particularly care.
Posted by: Leo | July 25, 2007 12:34 PM