Balkinization: Free John Rawls!

Free John Rawls!

Andrew Koppelman

John Rawls’s book, A Theory of Justice, is by common consensus the most important work of political philosophy written in the twentieth century. It was originally published in 1971. Rawls made a number of modifications and revisions to the book in the years immediately following its publication, and a revised edition was published in 1999, after illness made it impossible for him to revise it further. (He died in 2002.) Because the 1971 edition was so influential, philosophers now must consult both editions whenever they consider one of Rawls’s arguments. And teachers who cover Rawls must agonize about which edition to assign to their students. (I’ve just decided to go with the 1971 version.)

It would seem obvious that what’s needed is a variorum edition in which a reader can quickly and easily see what’s the same and what’s different in the two versions. Given the power of modern word processing technology, such an edition could be prepared easily and cheaply, and it would sell a lot of copies very quickly. It would also be a boon to scholarship. Leaving readers to figure out the differences themselves, without any scholarly help, makes as much sense as separately publishing the two editions of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

I have suggested to Harvard University Press that it publish a variorum edition, and others have made the same suggestion. It doesn’t seem to be getting through.

So if you’d like to see a final, definitive version of Rawls’s most important book, you’ll have to ask for it. I am reliably informed that the pertinent officer at Harvard University Press is Lindsay Waters. His email address is Lindsay_Waters@harvard.edu. Drop him a line.

I’ve been warned by one prominent scholar that my suggestion will lead some to complain that there are already too many Rawls books out there. The complaint is valid, but one can hardly object to a Rawls book written by Rawls himself. Particularly this book. In fact, this step would probably help reduce people's bulging Rawls collections, by letting them replace two volumes with one.

Posted 11:35 PM by Andrew Koppelman [link]

Comments:

This seems like an exclusively scholarly interest to me. I'd go with the revised edition, or better yet, Justice as Fairness. Similarly, I'd be happy if the A-edition stuff from the first Critique was available only in special, scholarly editions, and not considered required reading for amatuers and students.

# posted by

Anonymous : 10:01 AM

According to Samuel Freeman in the volume he edited for the Cambridge Companion series on Rawls, "the revised edition was completed in 1976 for the German translation...." This would seem to alter the picture a bit, i.e., that it was not illness that caused him to cease with further revisions (i.e, what of possible revisions between 1976 and 1999?). I wonder if Rawls himself ever expressed regret over reliance on the revised edition without reference to the first edition. I'm not opposed to your suggestion for a variorum edition, just questioning the urgency. In any case, it would seem anyone teaching Rawls will have to add another book to the syllabus: Freeman's just published, Rawls (New York: Routledge, 2007), in the series edited by Brian Leiter. At least that's the word from Harry Brighouse at Crooked Timber (http://crookedtimber.org/2007/12/10/rawls-by-samuel-freeman), and I've found him to be a reliable voice on such matters: 'Rawls (UK) is a triumph. A brilliantly careful, utterly transparent, account of Rawls’s thought and an admirable presentation of the state of the debates around Rawls’s work. The amazon reviewer who says “this is the one” gets it right. Forcing students to read Rawls is the right thing to do; but I shall never again force them to read him without providing Freeman’s text as indispensable help.'

# posted by

Patrick S. O'Donnell : 10:11 AM

Andrew, how does Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia measure up against Rawls in your opinion? I'm no philosopher, but I read Rawls two years ago, and I'm reading Nozick now. As far as I can tell, Nozick seems to be writing in response to Rawls and I have to say that I'm finding Nozick to be the more appealing of the two (though I'm only in Chapter 2). I guess my question should really be restated as follows: Why is Theory of Justice the preeminent work?

# posted by

Drogon Saurischian : 12:09 PM

I've recently written a critique of A Theory of Justice from the perspective of racial justice on my blog: www.radicalnegative.blogspot.com:

Rawls’ use of the veil therefore betrays political liberalism's morally fatal ignorance of racial injustice. Political reasoning behind the veil necessarily yields color blind norms because it requires citizens deliberating over justice to ignore the question of race. As a consequence, Rawls' mode of political reason is wholly unequipped to recognize the contemporary reality of racism, and conceive of justifiable norms for political redress...

read on at: http://radicalnegative.blogspot.com/2007/12/then-it-dawned-on-me-with-certain.html

# posted by

Blake Emerson : 1:28 PM

It is true that Harvard would benefit from publishing a variorum edition in the position that it is now, as a great university.

But we must understand that it was not ordained that Harvard would be a great university. To make an ethical decision, it must make a decision as to whether to publish a variorum edition that it would consider ethical were it made with Harvard not knowing what position in society that it would occupy.

# posted by

Dilan : 3:13 PM

It’s true that Rawls stopped revising in the mid-1970s. On the other hand, he did not allow a revised version to go to press until failing health precluded any further revisions, suggesting that he was keeping his options open until that time.

Rawls’s theory is important, but it’s hard to understand and subject to misinterpretation. That’s why it’s good for readers to have as complete a scholarly apparatus as possible.

In my view, Robert Nozick and Blake Emerson have both misinterpreted him. Since they are both clearly bright people, this shows that it isn’t easy.

Nozick thinks that Rawls improperly sanctions continuing interference with market transactions in order to improve distribution, thereby violating individuals’ right to their property. But Rawls is not proposing to violate the rules of property; he’s trying to think about what those rules ought to be. Nozick’s critique presupposes that we already know what the rules of property should be. Rawls thinks rules should be chosen, in part, on the basis of their distributional effects, but that those rules should then be strictly followed, in just the way Nozick has in mind. Nozick’s error is concisely laid out by Thomas Pogge in his recent book, John Rawls, pp. 178-84. It’s also worth noting that Nozick recanted his libertarian views in his later book, The Examined Life (1989).

Emerson thinks that Rawls mandates a rule of colorblindness, like that adopted by the present Supreme Court, thereby disabling the state from correcting racial injustice. Rawls does no such thing. It is true that no one knows his race in the original position, and so privilege based on the color of one’s skin is excluded (TJ, orig ed p. 149). But he also says that, in constructing the original position, he is deferring questions of compensatory justice (pp. 8-9). So nothing about race-conscious remedies follows from the veil of ignorance in the original position. Affirmative action could be of concern to Rawls only if it created a new privileged class based on black skin, or caused some white people to be placed in a social position even more disadvantageous than that of the least-well-off blacks. There are some critics of affirmative action who allege one or both of these things, but they are too silly to argue with. Actually, Rawls can be the basis of aggressively race-conscious remedies, as I argue in my book, Antidiscrimination Law and Social Equality, at http://books.google.com/books?id=qtM229qw7KcC.

The original position is only to be used in deliberating about the basic structure of society, not questions of everyday ethics. I presume that Dilan knows this perfectly well and is pulling our collective leg. Wise man meets wise guy.

# posted by

Andrew Koppelman : 4:03 PM

"A Theory of Justice" is a great work by a brilliant mind, but to call it the most important political philosophy book of the 20th century by common consensus could very well be like proclaiming Sir Robert Filmer to be "the greatest political thinker of his age" after one has already read Locke.

There exists persistent republican/postmodern/communicative traditions of political thought that wishes to critically engage liberalism, particularly in its twentieth century derivations, and so as long as copies of Arendt, Sandel, Pettit, Barber,Sheldon Wolin, Mouffe and Laclau, Foucault still float around (to mention nothing of other alternatives like Leo Strauss) still continue to strongly influence political philosophy, the jury is very much out as to whom from this list will ultimately seem more important than whom.

# posted by

Steven Maloney : 12:41 AM

The "greatest?" Hardly. Compared to Hayek, Popper, Finnis, Nozick, Shklar,"among" the more commonly read is without hyperbole.

It's influence was in its absurdities, its Kantian framework utterly undermined by biology, philosophy, and political science. The "veil of ignorance" is my favorite absurdity, but many more are to be had.

What all these authors succeeded in doing, whether intentionally or not, was to demonstrate liberal principles cannot be structured in a liberal theory, because the liberal principles often conflict, and theory permits no conflicts. Rawls showed us this by his futile effort, the last, I believe, to try and weave a coherent theory, and failing miserably.

Frankly, any writer who believes Rawls was more influential than either Hayek or Nozick really is an academic in the pejorative sense.

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