Andrew Bain examines John Rawls’s idea of justice in a political society and shows how it’s not so just

John Rawls has been one of the most influential voices in discussion and debate about the shape of liberal democracy over the past 40 years. Best known for his two lengthiest works, A Theory of Justice (1971) and Political Liberalism (1993), several of Rawls’s insights are, for most contributors to political discussion, so pervasive as to form part of the unconsciously assumed landscape. For others, most notably politicians of the new-left’s ‘third way’ such as Tony Blair and Gerhard Schroeder, his approach as a considered whole has been the guiding force behind their own political philosophy. For Christians wishing to contribute to political discussion, a critical understanding of Rawls is therefore vital.

In his collected works, Rawls has attempted to provide a complete theory of how political society ought to operate in a democratic context. In content, his theory is very similar to the classical liberalism of Locke, Jefferson and Mill in its emphasis on the various fundamental freedoms that are to be accorded the individual vis-à-vis some kind of sovereign, representative government. However, in method, it purports to be altogether different. Rawls’s objective is to produce a theory of liberal democracy that is suitable for the pluralism of the late-modern era. He does not wish his proposal to be dependent upon any sectarian “comprehensive doctrines or worldviews”—that is, any secular ideology or religious opinions which may not be universally accepted in a diverse society. The hegemonic, comprehensive claims of both Christianity and the universal human Reason of the Enlightenment, as well as any other comprehensive claims for that matter, are therefore eschewed by Rawls as he strives to give his theory a foundation which will be acceptable to all. Instead, the common basis for Rawls’s political society is the more relativistic notion of an ‘overlapping consensus’: political society should be founded upon, and only upon, those ideas that empirical observation of liberal societies suggests that virtually all sane people in such societies appear to agree upon.

(See PDF for complete article.)

Files:bain-rawls-just-society.pdf