Meaning and context in political theory
| Author | Albert Weale |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885120925375 |
| Published date | 01 October 2022 |
| Date | 01 October 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Review Articles |
Review Article EJPT
Meaning and context
in political theory
Albert Weale
University College London, UK
Abstract
The two books offer a contextual reinterpretation of Rawlsian and post-Rawlsian lib-
eralism. Nelson’s main thesis is that debates in liberal political theory re-enact
theological debates about theodicy going back to the Pelagian controversy. This claim
is criticized for its historical inaccuracy. Nelson’s invocation of theodicy as a refutation
of luck egalitarianism and the Rawlsian rejection of desert rest on a claim of possibility
that is too weak to uphold a plausible refutation. Forrester locates Rawls’s rejection of
desert in the thinking of his contemporaries. She not only shows the development
of Rawls’s thought but also details its broad influence. However, her thesis that the role
of economic planning in a theory of justice remained undeveloped by Rawls ignores the
intrinsic difficulties of designing a system of economic planning. The persistent antino-
mies of grace and free will in metaphysics, and of planning and the price mechanism in
economics, show the continuing relevance of meaning beyond context.
Keywords
desert, liberalism, modern political theory, theodicy, theology
Corresponding author:
Albert Weale, University College London, 29/31 Tavistock Square, WC1H 9QU, London, UK.
Email: a.weale@ucl.ac.uk
European Journal of Political Theory
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885120925375
journals.sagepub.com/home/ept
2022, Vol. 21(4) 847–857
Eric Nelson, The Theology of Liberalism: Political Philosophy and the Justice of God, Cambridge, MA and
London: Belknap Press, 2019; xii +218 pp.: £23.95, ISBN 978-0-67424-0940, hbk
Katrina Forrester, In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy,
Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019; xxii +401 pp.: £30, ISBN 978-0-691-
16308-6, hbk
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