Without Regret: The Comprehensive Nature of Non-Domination
| Published date | 01 May 2002 |
| Date | 01 May 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9256.00159 |
| Author | John W. Maynor |
| Subject Matter | Article |
© Political Studies Association, 2002.
Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
Without Regret: The Comprehensive
Nature of Non-domination
John W. Maynor
Oxford Brookes University
In this article I examine Rawls’s claim that there is no fundamental opposition between political
liberalism and republicanism. I contend that Rawls’s position is untenable in light of the neces-
sary values and virtues that must accompany republican liberty as non-domination. Furthermore,
I examine the ‘regret’ Rawls has toward some of the ‘political virtues’ of his approach and argue
that if republicans were to have the same attitude, republican liberty as non-domination would
be undermined. I conclude that republicanism is likely to be accompanied by values and virtues
that affect the whole of an individual’s life and therefore can be said to be a comprehensive
doctrine.
A striking feature of John Rawls’s political liberalism is his surprising contention
that his theory of ‘justice as fairness as a form of political liberalism’ is compatible
with classical republicanism (Rawls, 1996, p. 205).1Rawls is careful, however, to
draw a firm line between republicanism and what he calls civic humanism. For
Rawls, civic humanism is that strain of thought, often associated with forms of
Aristotelianism, which maintains that individuals are social or political beings
whose essence is only fully realised in democratic societies that have widespread
political participation. This participation in the democratic process is seen by Rawls
as a form of the good life itself and is thus a comprehensive moral doctrine (Rawls,
1996, p. 206). This is not true, however, of his view of classical republicanism,
which he takes ‘to be the view that if the citizens of a democratic society are to
preserve their liberties which secure the freedoms of private life, they must also
have to a sufficient degree the “political virtues” (as I have called them) and be
willing to take part in public life’ (ibid., p. 205). Rawls believes that because repub-
licanism does not presuppose any partially or wholly comprehensive philosophi-
cal, religious or moral doctrine then it is not in ‘fundamental opposition’ to political
liberalism.
Rawls’s claims are even more interesting in light of his recent effort to clarify politi-
cal liberalism in ‘The Idea of Public Reason Revisited’ (Rawls, 1999). In this work,
Rawls maintains that the content of public reason is informed by a ‘family of liberal
political conceptions of justice’ that are presented independently of any wider com-
prehensive doctrine (ibid., p. 143). For Rawls, the determining factor in whether
or not an approach is consistent with the ‘political’ nature of public reason is the
extent to which it satisfies the three conditions of a political conception of justice:
that it only applies to the basic structure of society; is independent of any wider
comprehensive doctrines; and is articulated in ideas consistent with the political
culture of a constitutional democratic society (Rawls, 1996, p. 223; also see Rawls,
POLITICS: 2002 VOL 22(2), 51–58
To continue reading
Request your trial