Collected Papers

457 Pages·2001·150.2 MB·English

by  John Rawls

J O HN RAWLS
Collected Papers
Edited by Samuel Freeman
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1999
. ..:-'-,u'.)»ischesse
Copyright © 1999 by the Prcsidenl and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in~PubUcmian Dam
For my many graduate students and colleagues,
Rawls, John, 1921—
[Selections. 1999] who have played such an important role in the development of my ideas
Collected papers / John Rawls; edited by Samuel Freeman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-13739-6 (allt. paper)
1. Justice. I. Freeman, Samuel Richard. II. Title.
JC578.R36925 1999
320'.0Tl—dc21 98-55932
Contents
Editor's Preface ix
1 Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics 1
2 Two Concepts of Rules 20
3 Justice as Fairness 47
4 Constitutional Liberty and the Concept of Justice 73
5 The Sense of Justice 96
6 Legal Obligation and the Duty of Fair Play 117
7 Distributive Justice 130
8 Distributive Justice: Some Addenda 154
9 The Justification of Civil Disobedience 176
10 Justice as Reciprocity 190
11 Some Reasons for the Maximin Criterion 225
12 Reply to Alexander and Musgrave 232
13 A Kantian Conception of Equality 254
14 Fairness to Goodness 267
15 The Independence of Moral Theory 286
16 Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory 303
17 Social Unity and Primary Goods 359
18 Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical 388
19 Preface for the French Edition of A Theory of Justice 415
20 The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus 421
21 The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good 449
22 The Domain of the Political and Overlapping Consensus 473
Contents
23 Themes in Kant's Moral Philosophy 497 Editor's Preface
24 The Law of Peoples 529
25 Fifty Years after Hiroshima 565
26 The Idea of Public Reason Revisited 573
27 Commonweal Interview with John Rawls 616
623
Credits
John Rawls's A Theory of Justice is one of the most influential works in moral
629
Index and political philosophy written in the twentieth century.' Twenty years in
the making, it was preceded by a scries of papers treating many of its major
themes (Chapters 1-10 of this volume). Rawls's Political Liberalism has a
less extended bul more complex period of development,2 beginning with
the 1980 Dewey Lectures al Columbia University (Chapter 16) and extending
through a series of papers written during that decade (Chapters 17-18 and
20-22).
Rawls has often said ihat he sees these papers as experimental works, op
portunities to try out ideas that later may be developed, revised, or aban
doned in his books. For this reason he has long been reluctant to permit
the publication of his collected papers in book form. The advice and en
couragement of his close friends and colleagues finally persuaded him oth
erwise.
This collection contains nearly all of Rawls's published papers. The papers
arc arranged according to the year of their original publication. Among the
papers not included are three papers already republished as Part III of the
paperback cdilion of Political Liberalism.* Also omitted are earlier versions of
1. A Theory of Justice [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
2. Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993; paperback edition,
1996).
3. Part III of Political Liberalism includes: "The Basic Structure as Subject," first published in
Values anil Morals, eel. Alan Goldman and (aegwon Kim (Dordrecht, 1978), pp. 47-71, itself a
substantial revision of a paper with the same title read before the meetings of the American
I'hilosophical Association (Pacific Division, 1977), and published in the American Philosophical
Quarterly, 14 (April 1977); "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority," The Tanner Lectures on
Human Values, ed. Sterling McMurrin (Salt Like City: University of Utah Press, 1983), pp. 3-87;
and, in the paperback edition only, "Reply lo Habermas," The Journal of Philosophy, 92:3 (March
1995).
Editor's Preface
Editor's Preface
two papers published again later in more complete form,'1 and three short
Rawls elaborates here the idea of reflective equilibrium and discusses the
works that are narrow in scope and written for specific occasions.5
relation of moral theory to other areas of philosophy. The basic idea of the
Rawls's papers speak for themselves; still, some background remarks are in
independence of moral theory is later applied to political philosophy, and
order. Chapter 1 (1951) was originally part of Rawls's dissertation at Princeton
provides one basis for Rawls's political liberalism.
University.6 It sets forth an account of moral justification that later informs his
Chapter 16, the 1980 Dewey Lectures, marks a significant development of
account of reflective equilibrium in A Theory of Justice. Chapter 2 (1955)
the Kantian interpretation of justice as fairness that was originally presented
contains Rawls's account of a practice, and provides the basis for the account
in A Theory of Justice. In Kantian constructivism Rawls brings to the forefront
of social institutions used in A Theory of Justice. In Chapter 3 (1958) Rawls
of his argument for justice as fairness the Kantian conception of free and equal
presents an early version of his contractarian idea, that principles of justice are
reasonable and rational persons, applying this conception to lay out the fea
to be regarded as the outcome of a general agreement among free persons who
tures of the original position and "construct" the principles of justice. Kantian
are equally positioned and who acknowledge the constraints of having a mo
constructivism leads Rawls to revise the argument for the primary social
rality. Here Rawls depicts the "general position" as a situation where contract
goods; Chapter 17 (1982) explains how they are related to the conception of
ing parties have knowledge of their circumstances, and themselves propose free and equal moral persons. The Kantian conception of the person is also
and argue over principles for the resolution of future conflicts. The original applied to specify the basic liberties, justify their priority, and resolve conflicts
position is introduced in Chapter 4 (1963), and the term "veil of ignorance" is between the basic liberties.7
first applied to it in Chapter 7 (1967). Chapters 7 and 8 (1968) on distributive
But Kantian constructivism proves to be a transition stage in Rawls's
justice and the difference principle are largely incorporated into A Theory of
thought, for it brings to the surface certain internal inconsistencies that Rawls
Justice, as are the moral psychology set forth in Chapter 5 (1963) and the
sees as implicit in his original argument for the stability of justice as fairness.
justification of civil disobedience in Chapter 9 (1969). Chapter 10, though
Rawls suggests it is unrealistic to expect that everyone in a well-ordered society
published in 1971, was prepared in the summer of 1959 for teaching purposes
of justice as fairness will accept the same comprehensive moral view to support
at Harvard University, where Rawls was a visiting professor in 1959-60. Chap
their convictions of justice. This problem gradually leads Rawls to focus on
ter 10 is a rewriting and elaboration of Chapter 3.
issues more general than the justification of justice as fairness. Given that
After publication of A Theory of Justice came a series of papers in which
liberty of conscience, freedom of thought, and toleration of different philo
Rawls clarifies his account of justice and responds to various critics. Those
sophical and religious views are all central features of a well-ordered demo
papers included here elucidate the difference principle (Chapters 11-12) and
cratic society, how can reasonable persons holding different reasonable com
the Kantian bases of equality (Chapter 13), and discuss the theory of goodness
prehensive doctrines come to accept the same conception of liberal justice as
as rationality and its relationship to fairness (Chapter 14). Chapter 15 is
a shared basis for justification, public reasoning, and social unity? This raises
Rawls's 1974 Presidential Address to the American Philosophical Association.
problems of the stability and the political legitimacy of any liberal conception
of justice. In Chapters 18, 20, 21, and 22 Rawls introduces the ideas of reason
4. Omitted are the initial version of "Justice as Fairness," read before the APA Eastern Division
able pluralism, overlapping consensus, and public reason that later came to
and published in Journal of Philosophy, 54 (1957): 653-662; and the initial version of "The Basic
Structure as Subject," read before the APA Pacific Division and published in American Philosophi play a central role in dealing with this problem in Political Liberalism.
cal Quarterly, 14 (1977): 159-165. The final versions of these papers are reprinted here in Chapter In this connection Chapter 26 (1997) and the interview in Chapter 27
3, and in Political Liberalism, lecture VII.
(1998) are important, since they develop further the idea of public reason. A
5. Review of Stephen Toulmin's An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics, in Philosophi
forthcoming second edition of Political Liberalism will incorporate the revi
cal Review, 60 (1951): 572-580; "Reply to Lyons and Teitelman," Journal of Philosophy, 69 (1972):
556-557; and "Roderick Firth: His Life and Work," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. sions to the idea of public reason contained in Chapter 26.
51 (1991): 109-118. Rawls is currently completing a manuscript, to be published by Harvard
6. "A Study in the Grounds of Ethical Knowledge: Considered with Reference to ludgments University Press, that revises and develops the account of the law of peoples
on the Moral Worth of Character," Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1951; see Disserta
tion Abstracts, 15 (1955): 608-609.
7. See "The Basic Liberties and Their Priority" (1982), chapter 8 of Political Liberalism.
Editor's Preface
initially presented in Chapter 24 (1993) and applied in Chapter 25 (1995).
Another forthcoming publication by Harvard Press will be the extensive Har
vard lectures on Kant from which Chapter 23 (1989) is drawn, as well as John Rawls: Collected Papers
Rawls's lectures on Leibniz, Hume, and Hegel.*
These papers traverse John Rawls's career. They present nearly fifty years of
thought about the nature of justice and its feasibility. It is a career guided by a
reasonable faith that a just society is realistically possible.
I would like to thank Mary Ellen Geer and Kimberly Steere of Harvard
University Press for their assistance in editing and preparing these papers for
publication. I am also grateful to Annette Lareau, my wife, for helping me
prepare the manuscript and the index.
8. The lectures on Kant, Leibniz, Hume, and Hegel are edited by Barbara Herman and
Christine Korsgaard.
Philosophical Review
Outline of a Decision Procedure for Ethics
Author(s): John Rawls
Source: The Philosophical Review, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 1951), pp. 177-197
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2181696
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OUTLINE OF A DECISION
PROCEDURE FOR ETHICS
i.i The question with which we shall be concerned can be stated as
follows: Does there exist a reasonable decision procedure which is
sufficiently strong, at least in some cases, to determine the manner in
which competing interests should be adjudicated, and, in instances of
conflict, one interest given preference over another; and, further, can
the existence of this procedure, as well as its reasonableness, be estab-
lished by rational methods of inquiry? In order to answer both parts
of this question in the affirmative, it is necessary to describe a reason-
able procedure and then to evidence that it satisfies certain criteria.
This I attempt to do beginning at 2.i below.
i.2 It should be noted that we are concerned here only with the
existence of a reasonable method, and not with the problem of how to
make it psychologically effective in the settling of disputes. How much
allegiance the method is able to gain is irrelevant for our present
purposes.
1.3 The original question has been framed the way it is because the
objectivity or the subjectivity of moral knowledge turns, not on the
question whether ideal value entities exist or whether moral judgments
are caused by emotions or whether there is a variety of moral codes
the world over, but simply on the question: does there exist a reason-
able method for validating and invalidating given or proposed moral
rules and those decisions made on the basis of them? For to say of
scientific knowledge that it is objective is to say that the propositions
expressed therein may be evidenced to be true by a reasonable and
reliable method, that is, by the rules and procedures of what we may
call "inductive logic"; and, similarly, to establish the objectivity of moral
rules, and the decisions based upon them, we must exhibit the decision
procedure, which can be shown to be both reasonable and reliable, at
least in some cases, for deciding between moral rules and lines of con-
duct consequent to them.
I77
THE PHILOSOPHICAL REVIEW
2.i For the present, we may think of ethics as being more analogous
to the study of inductive logic than to any other established inquiry.
Just as in inductive logic we are concerned with discovering reasonable
criteria which, when we are given a proposition, or theory, together
with the empirical evidence for it, will enable us to decide the extent
to which we ought to consider it to be true so in ethics we are at-
tempting to find reasonable principles which, when we are given a
proposed line of conduct and the situation in which it is to be carried
out and the relevant interests which it effects, will enable us to deter-
mine whether or not we ought to carry it out and hold it to be just and
right.
2.2 There is no way of knowing ahead of time how to find and form-
ulate these reasonable principles. Indeed, we cannot even be certain
that they exist, and it is well known that there are no mechanical
methods of discovery. In what follows, however, a method will be
described, and it remains for the reader to judge for himself to what
extent it is, or can be, successful.
2.3 First it is necessary to define a class of competent moral judges
as follows: All those persons having to a certain requisite degree each
of the following characteristics, which can, if desired, be made more
determinate:
(i) A competent moral judge is expected to have a certain requisite
degree of intelligence, which may be thought of as that ability which
intelligence tests are designed to measure. The degree of this ability
required should not be set too high, on the assumption that what we
call "moral insight" is the possession of the normally intelligent man
as well as of the more brilliant. Therefore I am inclined to say that a
competent moral judge need not be more than normally intelligent.
(ii) A competent judge is required to know those things concern-
ing the world about him and those consequences of frequently per-
formed actions, which it is reasonable to expect the average intelligent
man to know. Further, a competent judge is expected to know, in all
cases whereupon he is called to express his opinion, the peculiar facts
of those cases. It should be noted that the kind of knowledge here
referred to is to be distinguished from sympathetic knowledge discussed
below.
(iii) A competent judge is required to be a reasonable man as this
characteristic is evidenced by his satisfying the following tests: First,
i78