Rawls and political realism: Realistic utopianism or judgement in bad faith?
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115578970 |
| Author | Alan Thomas |
| Date | 01 July 2017 |
| Published date | 01 July 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2017, Vol. 16(3) 304–324
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115578970
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Article
Rawls and political realism:
Realistic utopianism or
judgement in bad faith?
Alan Thomas
Department of Philosophy, Tilburg School of Humanities,
The Netherlands
Abstract
Political realism criticises the putative abstraction, foundationalism and neglect of the
agonistic dimension of political practice in the work of John Rawls. This paper argues
that had Rawls not fully specified the implementation of his theory of justice in one
particular form of political economy then he would be vulnerable to a realist critique.
But he did present such an implementation: a property-owning democracy. An appre-
ciation of Rawls s specificationist method undercuts the realist critique of his concep-
tion of justice as fairness.
Keywords
Egalitarianism, political realism, John Rawls, Bernard Williams
This paper evaluates the critique of John Rawls presented by two leading ‘political
realists’, namely Bernard Williams and Raymond Geuss. They were the first to
make the claim that Rawls’s work exemplifies a ‘political moralism’ that takes
political philosophy to be a form of ‘applied moral philosophy’ (Gledhill, 2012).
This moralism is to be corrected by the realist’s insight that there is a basic legit-
imation demand internal to the political that does appeal to a moral idea, but one
that emerges with the conditions of the political itself.
1
The debate between realists and putative ‘moralists’ (who ought, I will suggest,
to reject this characterisation of their views by their opponents) has now acquired
considerable momentum of its own. It is internally complex and has produced
many sub-threads of discussion involving further claims and counter-claims.
My limited aim here is not comprehensively to survey these positions, rather to
question whether this whole debate set off on the wrong footing when the
realists selected Rawls as their paradigmatic political moralist. I will argue that,
Corresponding author:
Alan Thomas, Department of Philosophy, Tilburg School of Humanities, Tilburg, The Netherlands.
Email: a.thomas@tilburguniversity.edu
whatever the merits of the realist position, Rawls cannot appropriately be inter-
preted as its target.
I will draw on an analogy to structure my discussion: between the realists’ cri-
tique of Rawls and Hegel’s critique of Kant. The orthodox conception of this
critique is that Hegel objected to the emptiness, formality and abstraction of
Kantian morality and sought to replace it with an ethics grounded on the concrete
reality of ethical life. However, Ken Westphal has argued that this an incorrect
interpretation of this critique: properly understood, Hegel’s argument is that were it
not possible fully to specify the content of Kant’s ethical view in a fully concrete
and determinate way, then it would be open to the objection that it was abstract,
empty and formal (Westphal, 2005). But Hegel also argues that Kantian moral-
ity can be given a fully concrete and determinate specification; furthermore, he
demonstrates how this can be done. So this putative ‘critique’ of Kant is, as
it were, counterfactual: Kant’s view is merely incomplete in the sense of ‘under-
specified’. It requires a completion that Hegel finds it natural to supply – by its com-
plete specification. So both Kant’s view and Hegel’s view emerge from this exercise
vindicated in the light of a specificationist account of practical reasoning
2
(Richardson, 1994).
I will develop the analogy as follows: the political realist is troubled by the
putatively ahistoricist, decontextualised and abstract nature of Rawls’s theory of
justice. Understood in this way, the political realist is playing the role of Hegel, and
Rawls the role of Kant, in the orthodox understanding of Hegel’s critique of Kant.
The realist’s version of the charges of ‘emptiness’ and ‘formalism’ is this: Rawls’s
views are damagingly indeterminate. Both the scope of Rawls’s principles and how
they are to be applied are left completely open. Being indeterminate in this sense,
they demand extension (not specification) by a process of political judgement.
But for reasons internal to the view, the realist continues, Rawls can offer no
guidance to political judgement: only the ‘prior application’ of moral principles to
politics. Gesturing in this way towards a mechanistic application of moral prin-
ciples – an ‘algorithm’ – is to name a problem, but not to solve it. The realist
deepens this objection by adding that Rawls ignores a distinctive feature of political
judgement, notably, its sensitivity to its historical circumstances. The realist con-
cludes that Rawls’s views are indeterminate, and thereby call for political judge-
ment, yet frustrate that very goal. By representing political statecraft as the
algorithmic application of prior moral principle this kind of moralism invites the
charge of bad faith: the evasion of political responsibility.
I will argue that this central realist claim is implausible because it equivocates
over the term ‘indeterminacy’. With the equivocation eliminated, I will then apply
the alternative interpretation of Hegel’s critique of Kant to the realist’s critique of
Rawls: Rawls’s view would be defensible only if it were open to a fully determinate
specification. But, were it capable of such a specification, it would be a defensible
view and the realists’ critique would lapse. I will argue that the realist critique of
Rawls does lapse once the relevant sense of indeterminacy has been identified.
The problem is that the political realist assumes that abstraction always leads to
indeterminacy in a problematic sense of ‘open’, or gappy – not covering all the
Thomas 305
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