I have been reading around in Raymond Geuss's quite interesting and iconoclastic set of papers, Outside Ethics (Princeton University Press, 2005), and found the essay on Rawls, "Neither History nor Praxis" especially striking. Responding to Rawls's autobiographic statement that his service in World War II stimulated his interested in the theory of justice, Geuss comments (p. 31):
One can easily imagine a person confronted with the events of the Second World War being motivated to ask various questions, for instance about European history, about the dynamics of political systems under stress, about the economics of competitive international markets, about human social psychology and the structure of collective action. What, however, would one have to believe about the world to think that "What is the correct conception of justice?" is the appropriate question to ask in the face of concentration camps, secret police, and the firebombing of cities? Are reflections about the correct distirbution of goods and services in a "well-ordered society" the right kind of intellectual response to slavery, torture, and mass murder? Was the problem in the Third Reich that people in extermination camps didn't get the slice of the economic pie that they ought to have had, if everyone had discussed the matter freely and under the right conditions? Should political philosophy really be essentially about questions of fairness of distribution of resources? Aren't security and the control of violence far more important? How about the coordination of action, the sharing of information, the cultivation of trust, the development and deployment of human individual and social capacities, the management of relations of power and authority, the balancing of the demands of stability and reform, the provision for a viable social future?
Geuss, to be sure, has specific, substantive doubts about the resulting Theory of Justice. Why, he asks, think that there would be any agreement in an "original position": "No matter how long they discussed matters, there might remain at the end different groups with different views" (p. 32). And even if there were an agreement, why should it "have any relevance whatever to us, who do have concrete 'identities,' parts of which sometimes can be of importance to us, and who live in a concrete situation in a complex real world" (p. 32)? The "difference principle," Geuss suggests, both (1) helps explain why the theory's "political effects..has been close to zero" (p. 33), since it "turns out to be extremely difficult to assess in practice whether or not a certain existing inequality is or is not allowed by the difference principle" (p. 33), and (2) is itself "morally very repellent" since "increases in the absolute standard of living of the poor can, in principle, justify very great inequalities" (p. 33).
Geuss is no fonder of the argument of the later Law of Peoples, noting that Rawls believes that,
Outlaw states may not be exterminated ad libitum, but "liberal" states have a right to keep and deploy nuclear weapons for deterrent purposes, and may attack outlaw states with military force under certain circumstances if that is necessary to prevent violation of human rights. This does not even purport to be a view from an anonymous universal "original position," but is, even on the most superficial inspection, a specifically American political position--more enlightened, perhaps, than that of George W. Bush or Condoleeza Rice, but generically the same kind of thing. Of course, no one can object in principle to citizens helping to elaborate the national ideology (provided it is not actively vicious), but philosophy has in the past often aspired to something more than this. (p. 34)
Noting that the huge growth of the academic industry surrounding Rawls's A Theory of Justice coincided with increasing inequality and a rightward turn of the Western industrial democracies, Geuss asks (p. 38):
Is it,...or should it be, of any significance that the "normative" moral and political theory of the Rawlsian type has nothing, literally nothing, to say about the real increase in inequality, except perhaps "so much the worse for the facts"? This is not a criticism to the effect that theoreticians should act rather than merely thinking, but a criticism to the effect that they are not thinking about relevant issues in a serious way.
Geuss favors an approach to political philosophy in which one studies,
history, social and economic institutions, and the real world of politics in a reflective way. This is not incompatible with "doing philosophy"; rather, in this area, it is the only sensible way to proceed. After all, a major danger in using highly abstractive methods in political philosophy is that one will succeed merely in generalizing one's own local prejudices and repackaging them as demands of reason. The study of history can help to counteract this natural human bias....
One of the great uses of history is to show us what, because it has in the past been real, is a fortiori possible. This can give rise to various illusions. Something can be thought to be politically possible now because it actually existed in the past, but it may have been possible in the past because of circumstances that have meanwhile changed. This is a case in which further development of the very historical consciousness that gave rise to the problem will contribute to clearing it away. (pp. 38-39)
From the preceding reflections about how to approach political philosophy, Geuss concludes:
For those of us with views like these, Rawls is not a major moral and political theorist, whose work self-evidently deserves and repays the most careful scrutiny. Rather, he was a parochial figure who not only failed to advance the subject but also pointed political philosophy firmly in the wrong direction. (p. 39)
I'm curious what philosophers think. I have given, of course, only excerpts from the Geuss essay, and it is obvious enough how Rawlsians might respond to some of the particulars of Geuss's doubts about the theory of justice. But what about the more general criticisms of this approach to political philosophy and its relevance and value? Post only once; posts may take awhile to appear. Non-anonymous postings preferred, though, anonymous or otherwise, only substantive contributions will be approved.
