Chapter 1 excerpted from Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism On the Epistemology of Justice Eric Thomas Weber Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Eric Thomas Weber 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-6114-7 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Weber, Eric Thomas. Rawls, Dewey, and constructivism : on the epistemology of justice / Eric Thomas Weber. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN: 978-1-4411-6114-7 1. Justice. 2. Rawls, John, 1921–2002. 3. Dewey, John, 1859–1952. 4. Constructivism (Philosophy) 5. Social contract. I. Title. JC578.W415 2010 149--dc22 2010002781 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Contents Acknowledgments Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 vi Introduction Social Contract Theory, Old and New Worlds Apart: On Moral Realism and Two Constructivisms Freedom and Phenomenal Persons Rawls’s Epistemological Tension: The Original Position, Relective Equilibrium, and Objectivity Chapter 6 Dewey and Rawls on Education 1 12 36 71 91 111 Notes Bibliography Index 139 154 161 Chapter 1 Introduction I. Introduction and Goals In his recent book, On Constructivist Epistemology, Tom Rockmore reveals a tension in Kant’s work between representationalism and constructivism.1 Rockmore claims that “those committed to a representationalist approach to knowledge all understand the problem of knowledge as requiring an analysis of the relation of a representation to an independent object, not as it subjectively appears to be, but as it objectively is.”2 Representationalists include thinkers who hold to a correspondence theory of truth, such as Plato, G. E. Moore, and David Brink, to name a few. They hold that objectivity of truth refers to a special kind of independence of the world from what any of us thinkers have to say about it. Representationalists abound not only with regard to the physical world, but also in reference to the moral realm. By contrast, a constructivist understanding of knowledge takes the objects of knowledge to be affected or conditioned by the knower, to a greater or lesser extent. There is a wide range of constructivist theories. They differ in the extent to which it is believed that we can control the objects of knowledge. Richard Rorty is an example of one who believes that the control over and freedom to construct objects of thought is great.3 Others, like Hilary Putnam and Larry A. Hickman, are more conservative regarding this issue.4 John Rawls, one of the most inluential political philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, was a self-described constructivist. In his work, however, we ind traces of both constructivism and representationalism. By contrast, John Dewey’s constructivism provides a more robust political philosophy. Dewey does so by addressing the deep and fundamental ways we come to form 2 Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism ourselves, our communities, and thereby also the problems that ensue for us. Dewey’s constructivism is focused on the construction of meaning generally, then of persons, education, and justice. The present work will examine some of the differences between Rawls’s and Dewey’s constructivisms and will argue that Dewey’s in-depth version resolves some of the problems that arise in Rawls’s. My focus will be primarily to offer a critique of Rawls’s incomplete acceptance of constructivism as an epistemological understanding of the formation of meaning. The further step of developing the various elements of an exhaustive account of Deweyan constructivism is beyond the scope of this book, though I will offer some initial suggestions about how this can be undertaken. I irst noted my dissatisfaction with Rawls’s constructivism while focusing on his theory of education. Speciically, Rawls’s liberalism leads him to depend upon a conception of persons as fully formed rational agents. What Dewey noted, long before Rawls, was the need to carefully consider the development of persons as objects, goals, or products of politics, not simply as actors. To invoke this notion might lead some to worry about brainwashed citizens and to clichés we know from science/iction novels. As Dewey sees the matter, socialization is inevitable. The question is to what extent socialization is intelligently employed for the good of society. Rawls’s limited theory of education and his inattention to construction’s relation to education demonstrate clearly that he did not see the project of helping to shape individuals as the broad and artful process that it can be.5 Rather, like all social contract thinkers, Rawls centers his thought on the fully rational, adult individual, untarnished by the hands of cultural inluence. This assumption in Rawls’s educational theory led me to examine his constructivism, a theory that human beings participate in creating facts about the world and themselves, including in the moral and political realm (depending on which version of his constructivism). Tom Rockmore’s recent books6 provide help in understanding Rawls’s epistemology through Kant’s. Rockmore’s claim that there is a tension between constructivism and representationalism in Kant’s epistemology is pivotal for understanding the problems in Rawls’s work. It is arguable that during the Introduction 3 second half of the twentieth century, Rawls’s Kantian project revitalized the philosophical community’s interest in politics. Given the prominence of Rawls’s work in contemporary political debates, I believe it is important to recognize that Rockmore’s challenge for Kant also applies to Rawls. My principal aim is to show that Rawls’s writings exhibit a tension between representationalism and constructivism, even though his explicit claim was that he was a constructivist. One goal of my analysis of these forms of constructivism will be to demonstrate the advantages of Dewey’s philosophy of education. Rawls’s theory of education focuses on learning facts and developing basic abilities. Following the reasoning of the liberal tradition, Rawls wanted to minimize imposition on people, which I believe has troubling implications for the task of education. There are three ways in which I intend to argue for my thesis. First, Rawls’s social contract theory (SCT) is problematic. SCT is a form of conceptual analysis whose truth is untestable and unempirical,7 even though it depends upon a form of representationalism. Rawls appeals to the sensibilities of persons like himself, but his counterfactual original position could easily result in support for both liberal and non-liberal political positions. It (SCT) is nevertheless an important component in the development of Rawls’s A Theory of Justice.8 Although it has been argued that Rawls can divorce SCT9 from defenses of his two principles of justice,10 the alternative he employs, relective equilibrium,11 also maintains tension between representationalism and constructivism.12 Second, Rawls’s conception of persons exhibits a problem which emerges from his representationalism. Rawls conceives theoretically of a noumenal self, a self that is not of the world of appearances, but a self in itself. This approach to speaking of persons is problematic because it is necessarily atomistic.13 Rawls’s notion of the person, more commonly referred to as the (autonomous) self, conlicts with his explicit allegiance to constructivism. For it is not just external objects that are constructed, according to most versions of constructivism, but persons as well.14 This problem for Rawls stems from the tension he inherited from Kant. In Political Liberalism, Rawls wants to be clear that we are talking about hypothetical persons, who are rational agents of political construction. We are to imagine that they 4 Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism are theoretical entities whose imagined deliberations are to be a source of the truth about justice for real people. And, in Political Liberalism, Rawls still does not recognize the importance of the process of developing persons intelligently through education. By contrast, Dewey’s constructivism informs his social conception of the person as relational and constructed. Peirce’s transformation of Kant,15 furthermore, shows why constructivism must be based on selves that are social and relational in nature, even in theoretical constructions. Third, Rawls employs the distinction between concepts and conceptions, irst articulated in idea by H. L. A. Hart in The Concept of Law.16 The idea behind this distinction is that we each have our own conception of justice or of law, yet we also speak of the concept of justice. Rawls interprets Hart as claiming that concepts are “speciied by the role which these different sets of principles, these different conceptions, have in common.”17 Even though this distinction is not fully developed in Hart’s work, Rawls nevertheless makes considerable use of it. I will argue that Rawls overstates the uniformity of the roles that varying conceptions of justice play.18 II. Background My motivation for focusing on a critique of Rawls’s SCT was in part guided by the work of Larry A. Hickman and Hilary Putnam. On several occasions, Hickman calls attention to the strange fact that Rawls returns to SCT without responding to the criticisms of the approach which Dewey previously raised. For example, Hickman writes, Dewey rejected the social-contract theory in all its numerous manifestations. It was his view that social-contract theories neither provide what they have historically claimed to, that is, causal explanations, nor do they do any useful work when regarded, as they now most often are, as a hypothetical “limit.” Observation led him to conclude that the search for “state-forming forces” uniformly leads to myths that are at best unhelpful and at worst misleading. Inquiry into social and political activity, like inquiry of other sorts, must begin where human beings ind themselves—in media res.19 Introduction 5 Dewey and Hickman are committed to historical inquiries that avoid reference to the intangible realms of Platonic forms, general wills, or fully rational ideal individuals. In his recent book, Ethics without Ontology, Putnam identiies SCT as a problem at the core of contemporary political philosophy. Many have come to accept SCT, its implied notions of individuality, and the questions around which it centers as fundamental to political thought.20 Although there are communitarian critics of SCT,21 Dewey’s earlier criticisms do not seem to have played a role in the current debate. Putnam and Hickman treat SCT in passing, but they invite further consideration of a Deweyan analysis of Rawls’s SCT. My critique will take its place among previous criticisms and defenses of Rawls’s SCT as well as of constructivism more generally. Daniel M. Savage’s John Dewey’s Liberalism: Individual, Community, and Self-Development offers one such contribution to Dewey scholarship that supports my reading of Dewey. Savage focuses on advancing Deweyan conceptions of autonomy, individuality, community, and self-development. My analysis will differ from Savage’s in several ways. First, Savage’s scope is quite broad. By attempting to argue against an entire spectrum of thinkers engaged in the liberal/communitarian debate, Savage invites the criticisms of reviewers such as Robert Talisse and Gregory M. Fahy.22 Talisse charges Savage with failing to engage competing theorists. But although Savage does briely discuss the views of other political philosophers, his book’s title is appropriate: It indicates his focus on Dewey. Savage’s critics present strong challenges to his mode of articulating Dewey’s views. I will set my sights more narrowly than did Savage. My purpose is a Deweyan critique of John Rawls’s constructivism. A second important difference between Savage’s work and my own is my emphasis on returning the attention of political philosophy to the issue of education. His book offers an indication of areas that need more attention, such as the question of how conceptions are constructed. I will introduce this theme from a Deweyan perspective in opposition to both moral realist claims and Rawls’s underexplored constructivism.23 Savage only touches on constructivism and only abstractly states the reason we must understand it.24 He appears to be stuck in the game he criticizes. He justiies governments and 6 Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism political authority rather than arguing for the best form of government in terms of the development of intelligent social inquiry, that is democracy. This, of course, was Dewey’s aim. Fahy rightly criticizes Savage on this very point. Given this challenge, I hope to illuminate the relation of constructivism to individuality, community, education, and democracy. Aside from Putnam, Savage, and Dewey, I will also take important cues from Rawls himself, who brilliantly addresses criticisms of A Theory of Justice. In Political Liberalism, for example, he asks how we should address the fact that we are not a society composed of like-minded people. He also asks the important question of how it is people with different conceptions of justice come to share in a social concept of justice. Regrettably, Rawls never fully explains the distinction between concepts and conceptions, though he so thoroughly depends on it. He also neglects the importance of taking persons as objects or products of society’s constructions and efforts. Two further books have recently been published, which deal with constructivism and social contract theory. In 2006, Paul Boghossian published Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism.25 It is important for me to clarify that Boghossian’s challenge is not properly directed at the constructivism I will be arguing for in this book. He argues that constructivism and relativism share an adherence to what he calls a “doctrine of equal validity.” He succinctly states the doctrine in the following way: “There are many radically different, yet ‘equally valid’ ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them.”26 While there may be constructivists who hold to such a theory, the idea that science is just another way of knowing the world is not a match for Dewey’s way of thinking. Public inquiry is the process whereby people with different points of view engage with one another in theorizing and putting their views into the public sphere for common critique and evaluation. That is, for a Deweyan, constructivism is not against a sense of objectivity. This is what Boghossian denies out of the gate. He assumes that a constructivist must let go of all notions of objectivity. I address this issue in several sections of the present book. For the most extended account I offer of a constructivist notion of objectivity, see Chapter 5, “Rawls’s Epistemological Tension: The Original Position, Relective Introduction 7 Equilibrium, and Objectivity.” In sum, Boghossian’s critique of constructivism assumes a crucial premise with which I wholeheartedly disagree.27 For a more recent Deweyan account of objectivity consistent with my understanding of his constructivism, see Hilary Putnam’s Ethics without Ontology, in which Putnam includes a chapter that offers an account of “Objectivity without Objects.”28 The most recent text that has come out on Rawls’s SCT and education is Mark E. Button’s Contract, Culture, and Citizenship, in which Button argues that “contract makes citizens,” contrary to the typical way of thinking of the social contract tradition.29 The common way of understanding SCT is to imagine fully formed individuals bargaining with one another over conditions that will become applicable to them upon entering the real world. We are to imagine people who can talk about what they want before they enter society. The typical challenge to this view, which I revisit in several passages of this book, is that to imagine people independently of their usual social encumbrances and identities is at least misleading and cannot answer the question of why it is such persons’ decisions would be applicable to you and me in the real world. Button argues that this common criticism of SCT does not take into account the many values that various thinkers imply in the way that contract shapes persons. The passage most relevant to the present project concerns Rawls’s “idea of public reason,” which demands social enculturation such that citizens “understand their political and moral relationships to others.”30 As I see it, Button hopes to alleviate some important concerns regarding SCT, but this project does not address the troubles that Dewey and Putnam ind in searching for state forming principles. What I will say for now is that more can be said in defense of social contract theory than some critics will allow, such as that education in SCT could be more full-bodied than minimalist accounts imply. Wherever scholars show a greater appreciation for the challenge of preparing persons intelligently to be good citizens than Rawls does, I applaud their efforts. Another example of a scholar who extends the scope of what could arguably be implied for an improved Rawlsian theory of education is Victoria Costa, whose work I discuss in Chapter 6, “Dewey and Rawls on Education.” The challenges I raise for Rawls’s SCT, as exhibiting a tension between representationalism 8 Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism and constructivism, appear to be unaddressed in Button’s and Costa’s work, though of course their purposes are not to examine Rawls’s epistemology. To summarize, the central conlict I see between my examination of Rawls’s work and Button’s examination of it concerns the dificulty I have in reconciling Rawls’s interest in fashioning “a climate within which . . . citizens acquire a sense of justice inclining them to meet their duty of civility”31 with his further goal of minimizing the content of education in liberal societies, which I describe in Chapter 6. Still, I appreciate Button’s attention to the intelligent and purposeful development of human beings’ capacities and sensibilities, a subject which Rawls relegates to the domain of psychology. III. Structure My argument for claiming that Rawls’s work exhibits the tension that Rockmore inds in Kant between representationalism and constructivism is best understood from the inside out. It moves from an examination of Rawls’s constructivism to his focus on the noumenal self, then to his SCT and relective equilibrium. For, to understand the problems of SCT, one must recognize the problems inherent in conceiving of persons noumenally and atomistically. One must also understand the nature and function of conceptions. It is here that Rawls’s theory is thin and Dewey’s theory is robust. My critique thus leads to a challenge for SCT or any such theory that relies on a search for immutable principles of justice.32 This is because such theories neglect the historical, experimental, and precarious nature of social problems. It is not my aim to focus strictly on SCT. Rather, I hope that it will be clear why constructivist epistemology is an important feature of democratic political philosophy, especially as it pertains to education. Before jumping into my critique of Rawls’s constructivism, I will establish the historical context of SCT and Rawls’s place in it in Chapter 2, “Social Contract Theory, Old and New,” originally published in The Review Journal of Political Philosophy.33 It is important to situate Rawls in context. He explicitly sees his project in A Theory of Introduction 9 Justice as attempting to overcome the dificulties that previous forms of SCT encountered. The difference between Rawls’s Kantian form of SCT, which refers to a hypothetical contract, and other traditional forms of SCT is important for understanding some of the tradition’s challenges that he hoped to avoid. I will point out, however, Hickman’s and Putnam’s reminders of Dewey’s criticisms of SCT, which Rawls never fully addressed. In Chapter 3, “Worlds Apart: On Moral Realism and Two Constructivisms,” I will focus on the role of and reasons for constructivism in opposition to representationalist alternatives. I will begin this chapter with an account of Rockmore’s interpretation of Kant. I will situate Rawls’s limited constructivism with respect to the views of David Brink, who is an important proponent of moral realism. Brink believes that truths about moral facts are independent of what anyone thinks about them. I offer arguments in favor of a constructivist alternative to Brink, even while admitting some level of moral objectivity.34 The version of constructivism that I will defend does not lean toward Rorty’s end of the objectivity spectrum, but rather toward what Putnam and Hickman understand to be Dewey’s intention. Dewey noted numerous objective aspects of ethics—but this is not the same as claiming moral facts to be “mind-independent” in the way that realists commonly deine their views. Following Kant, Rawls recognizes the need for a constructivist basis for epistemology, especially in moral theory.35 Nevertheless, in numerous places his theory is supported by representationalist methods. One of my reasons for examining theories of moral realism is to show how Rawls is on the fence between them and constructivist models. Given this analysis of Rawls’s constructivism, I develop briely what Dewey’s richer theory entails. To this end, I will examine some work by Jim Garrison that presents elements of Dewey’s constructivism.36 My goal is not to develop a full account of Dewey’s constructivism, but just enough of it to demonstrate how we can begin to address the problems in Rawls’s constructivism. I will also focus on Rawls’s dependence upon Hart’s distinction between concepts and conceptions. This distinction, based on Rawls’s dependence upon the difference between individual conceptions of justice and an external concept of justice, is crucial to understanding 10 Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism his work. It is obvious that people construct processes and practices of justice socially, but this is not what Rawls means by constructivism, a fact that I will demonstrate in Chapter 3. A related issue involves Rawls’s relegation of the manner in which persons come to have conceptions to the domain of psychology. Kant, Peirce, and Dewey— among many others—thought this to be a deeply philosophical matter. The development of conceptions is social and instrumental for Peirce and Dewey. It can be informed through psychology, however, given an appropriate philosophical base of understanding. In particular, I will depend, as Dewey did,37 upon Peirce’s notion of meaning and truth and his reaction to Kant’s understanding of the development of conceptions (or ideas).38 In Chapter 4, “Freedom and Phenomenal Persons,” I will expose the representationalism implicit in Rawls’s concept of the person. Although his views on personhood change over the life of his corpus, Rawls’s theoretical dependence on the idea of a noumenal self is explicit, and his focus on autonomy in one form or another is maintained throughout. As a consequence of this approach and of his SCT, his conception of the person is atomistic.39 This development will be crucial to an understanding of the problems that plague his SCT as well as his notion of relective equilibrium. In Chapter 5, “Rawls’s Epistemological Tension: The Original Position, Relective Equilibrium, and Objectivity,” I will discuss the representationalist aspects of Rawls’s SCT and his relective equilibrium. Of course, philosophers such as Hume, Hegel, and Dewey have criticized SCT. What is new in my thesis, however, is my attention to Rawls’s representationalism. Following Kant, Rawls holds to a social contract theory grounded on hypothetical conditions. His account rests on a representationalist foundation. He bases his SCT on what would be the case in special circumstances. He believes that he can defend his version of SCT without depending upon representationalism. I will argue that Rockmore’s challenge to Kant also challenges Rawls’s claim. The inal chapter, “Dewey and Rawls on Education,” was originally published in Human Studies in December of 2008.40 In this chapter, I will conclude with an explanation of my dissatisfaction with Rawls’s theory of education. I offer my critique of Rawls’s educational theory Introduction 11 from a Deweyan perspective. I will also discuss some of the persistent criticisms of Dewey’s theory in order to show how one might reply to them. I depend on Larry A. Hickman’s work on Dewey’s Democracy and Education to clarify Dewey’s position in response to critics. In this inal chapter, I present what I take to be a clear area of concrete application of the study of constructivism—its implications for educational policy as a crucial matter of political consideration. This last chapter is intended especially to show that Rawls does not recognize the tie between education and the role of both concept formation and self-development in political philosophy. He conceives of persons as preformed, or as atoms who should be free from externally biasing inluence, perhaps the effect of liberal political theory taken too far. In this spirit, he does not attend to what we must do to inluence persons positively, beyond minimal, practical considerations. The insights derived from Peirce on the role of conceptions in unifying experience, which I discuss in Chapter 3, contribute to an understanding of Dewey’s more complex examinations of social constructions (and reconstructions) of concepts and practices. Dewey’s focus on both psychology and education is especially supportive of his political approach, which is, of course, constructivist. Rawls advocates a thin educational curriculum that rests upon mistaken notions of constructivism and atomism. Dewey’s alternative addresses the demand for the social construction of concepts, practices, and persons. His constructivism is stronger than recent “social constructivist” views found in postmodern theories and some sociological work. Dewey’s theory of education is not without its critics. I will discuss some of these in this chapter as well. Rawls’s alternative to Dewey’s approach, however, is inattentive to the need for the intelligent development of persons. Concluding the chapter and the book, I will discuss Larry Hickman’s essay, “Socialization, Social Eficiency, and Social Control,” to show how we might focus a renewed advocacy of Dewey’s educational theory, as well as to explain the sense in which Dewey’s understanding of socialization is open-ended, and not the scary dream of indoctrination which some liberals fear.41 Notes Chapter 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 I will at times use the terms realism and representationalism interchangeably. The reason for this is that they pertain to a common outlook on the concerns of metaphysics and epistemology. Realism as it is commonly conceived today is the metaphysical counterpart to representationalism. Representationalism, then, is the epistemological counterpart to realism. Of course, there will be subtle differences in the ways in which varying theorists describe this relationship. Realism and representationalism are distinct from constructivism, which has a metaphysical and an epistemological sense. Tom Rockmore, On Constructivist Epistemology (New York, NY: Rowman and Littleield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 24. See, for example, his essay, “Philosophy as a Kind of Writing: An Essay on Derrida,” 90–109 of Richard Rorty, Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). See, for example, Hilary Putnam, Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990). See also Larry Hickman’s Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2001). Hickman examines a middle-of-the-road view of Dewey’s in which he says that “though Dewey viewed knowledge as relative . . . he rejected the type of relativism advanced by some ‘deconstructionist’ philosophers who claim that there is no way to decide between ‘alternative readings of a text,’ whether that ‘text’ be a written one, a ‘text’ of nature, or the information that we have about our artifactual world.” See Hickman, 50. In Section II of this chapter, I discuss Mark E. Button’s recent book, Contract, Culture, and Citizenship, in which he argues that more can be said of the educational implications of social contract theory. I offer my challenge to Button’s new defense of Rawls there. In short, I am glad to see contemporary scholars extend the scope of what Rawls appears to say in several areas of his work regarding his quite limited educational theory. In that sense, I sympathize with Button even if I think great challenges remain for the undertaking, in part due to Rawls’s limited constructivism. See Rockmore’s On Constructivist Epistemology and In Kant’s Wake: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). By these two terms, I mean to say that Rawls offers us a counterfactual conditional. Because the antecedent condition—that we have fully rational persons situated in ideal circumstances—is false, then the consequent could logically be anything at all, and still render the conditional true. One could say that we can test people’s intuitions about what the consequent would be, but the result itself would not tell us the conditional is any truer. The notion I raise about it being unempirical concerns the sense in which for Rawls we are stuck with a fancy version of intuitionism. We are asked to consider what our intuitions tell us about what we would want in ideal circumstances. How can we know whether what we are feeling comes from intuitions or simply from our habituated inclinations? If from the latter, consider that we can condition our inclinations on purpose if it is desirable to do so. That is one of the invaluable purposes of studying literature in schools, for instance, when it comes to opening students’ minds to how others think and are treated. Therefore, our inclinations are not alone a special guide, except where shaped intelligently in the irst place, or if they are virtuous for some other reason. 140 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Notes Rawls has several forms of justiication: induction (relective equilibrium), deduction (the original position—modeled after SCT), and the idea of public reason (Kantian). For an analysis of these three forms of justiication in Rawls, see Scanlon’s “Rawls on Justiication” in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, edited by Samuel Freeman (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Scanlon’s chapter is on 139–167. See John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory,” The Journal of Philosophy 77, 9 (1980): 515–572. The irst principle states that “each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others.” The second demands that “social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that they are both (a) reasonably expected to be to everyone’s advantage and (b) attached to positions and ofices open to all.” See Rawls, Theory, 53. Rawls writes, “In searching for the most favored description of this situation we work from both ends. We begin by describing it so that it represents generally shared and preferably weaker conditions. We then see if these conditions are strong enough to yield a signiicant set of principles. If not, we look for further premises equally reasonable. But if so, and these principles match our considered convictions of justice, then so far well and good. But presumably there will be discrepancies. In this case we have a choice. We can either modify the account of the initial situation [the original position] or we can revise our existing judgments, for even the judgments we take provisionally as ixed points are liable to revision. By going back and forth, sometimes altering the conditions of the contractual circumstances, at others withdrawing our judgments and conforming them to principle, I assume that eventually we shall ind a description of the initial situation that both expresses reasonable conditions and yields principles which match our considered judgments duly pruned and adjusted.” See Rawls, Theory, 18. He credits Nelson Goodman’s Fact, Fiction, and Forecast for having made “parallel remarks concerning the justiication of the principles of deductive and inductive inference,” Rawls, ibid. While his views on relective equilibrium change and are interpreted in many ways, his claim that relective equilibrium offers true justiication is either confused or based on faith. In Political Liberalism, Rawls alters his claims about relective equilibrium. Yet, we ind, nonetheless, faith in the overlap of political conceptions as if they were held explicitly. And, the real realm of justice simply shifts to this overlap. He thus maintains the distinction between people’s conceptions and the actual realm of justiiable concepts. Relective equilibrium takes a variety of forms in Rawls’s work. I will discuss these in Chapter 6. Some, such as Allen Wood, have argued that Kant, Rawls’s inspiration, does not hold an atomistic conception of the self. See Wood’s Kant’s Ethical Thought, 347n. Wood writes, “Kant’s view, as is clear in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason . . . does not involve any commitment to the idea, challenged by Derek Parit, that being a person involves being a ‘Cartesian ego.’ See also Kant’s second section of the Foundations (or Groundwork), where he begins to claim that universality must involve the mutual relations of several selves at least inasmuch as it relates to humanity. See Kant, Foundations, 56 (439 of the standard notation). This defense of Kant, however, is far from offering an account of a Kantian theory of social selves. Rorty and Dewey differ signiicantly here. Rorty favors negative liberties, for example, whereas Dewey is open to the idea of radical reform that could promote positive liberties. This distinction is important since it appears that Rorty might follow Rawls in his liberalism about education. His later writings on sentimental education, however, conlict with his earlier stance on negative liberties. By contrast, for Dewey, steps in the direction of promoting positive liberties begin early, even at the point of selfdevelopment. Richard Shusterman examines these points and offers some details about the construction of persons in his article “Pragmatism and Liberalism between Dewey and Rorty,” Political Theory 22, 3 (August, 1994): 391–413. For an excellent essay on this subject, see C. B. Christensen, “Peirce’s Transformation of Kant,” The Review of Metaphysics XLVIII, No. 1, 189 (1994): 91–120. See also Sandra Rosenthal, “A Pragmatic Appropriation of Kant: Lewis and Peirce,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XXXVIII, 1/2 (2002): 254–266. Notes 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 141 Hart does not actually use the terms “concept” and “conceptions,” but Rawls offers them as names. Rawls, Theory, 5. Rawls believes that the function that conceptions of justice play is singular and thus it can be pumped as a resource for identifying what is singular in the concept of justice. This outlook takes as paradigmatic an outdated essentialism that is not justiied. This overstatement can only make sense if one holds a representationalist epistemology, furthermore. For, the roles that conceptions of justice play are not only widely varying, but are also in development and renewal continually. Rawls offers no justiication for the claim that conceptions of justice all share the same role. Implicit in his theory, therefore, is a thin and rigid understanding of meanings and purposes. See, Larry Hickman, John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology, ed. Don Ihde, The Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Technology (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1990/1992), 168. For one of many examples, see Roland Bénabou, “Inequality, Technology, and the Social Contract,” Working Paper Series, 10371 (Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004). In his article, Bénabou uses the term “social contract” to denote social arrangements generally, governments, and conditions of states. Some of them have come to call their view civic republicanism. See, Robert Talisse, “Review of ‘John Dewey’s Liberalism’ by Daniel Savage,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society XXXIX, 1 (2003): 134–137, and Gregory M. Fahy, “Review of ‘John Dewey’s Liberalism: Individual, Community, and Self-Development,’” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 17, 2 (2003): 136–138. I will only address one prominent representative of moral realist claims, David Brink, since there are many subtle varieties and since his is a well-respected version. Savage nowhere actually uses the word “constructivism.” Paul Boghossian, Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). Ibid., p. 2. It should be mentioned that Richard Rorty, who recaptured a great deal of present-day philosophers’ interest in Dewey, did throw out objectivity. In the areas of his writing in which he does so, however, he is either speaking for himself or misrepresenting Dewey. See Putnam, Ethics without Ontology, 52–70. Mark E. Button, Contract, Culture, and Citizenship (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 3. Ibid., p. 210. John Rawls, Political Liberalism, 252. I am indebted to Button for pointing me to this passage. Although Rawls refers to the revisability of considered judgments and conditions of inquiry (such as the conditions of the Original Position), he claims that his two principles of justice are the ones that would be selected by liberal societies. In Political Liberalism, he writes that his two principles of justice exemplify “the content of a liberal political conception of justice,” 6. The paper was published in The Review Journal of Political Philosophy 7, 2 (2009): 1–24. Neither Dewey nor I would hold to a categorical imperative. Accepting only hypothetical imperatives does not erase all objectivity, however. If I choose to vote in fair elections, for example, an objective characteristic of my freely chosen commitment is the implication that I will not stage a revolution if my candidate does not win. See John Rawls, “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory.” See Jim Garrison, “Deweyan Pragmatism and the Epistemology of Contemporary Social Constructivism,” American Educational Research Journal 32, 4 (1995): 716–740. See Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, 343n. There, Dewey writes, “The best deinition of truth from the logical standpoint which is known to me is that of Peirce.” See especially Charles S. Peirce, “On a New List of Categories,” in The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, edited by Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1867), 1–10. By the term “atomistic,” I mean that for Rawls, persons are understood as isolated from each other. The notion of the inherent sociality of persons is a challenger to the 142 40 41 Notes atomistic notion of selves. Atomism, as I use the term, also implies a certain outlook regarding persons that prioritizes idealizations of personality over lived experiences, and which commonly treats those idealizations as the source of real and independent truth. For Rawls, for example, idealized individuals who imagined to perform a political construction are said to be the source of the correct principles of justice. See Human Studies 31, 4 (December 2008): 361–382. Larry Hickman, “Socialization, Social Eficiency, and Social Control,” in John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect, edited by David T. Hansen (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006), 67–79. Chapter 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 The paper was published in The Review Journal of Political Philosophy 7, 2 (2009): 1–24. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996), xvii. See Michael Lessnoff, ed., Social Contract Theory (New York: New York University Press, 1990), 5. Ibid. See John Christman, Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2002), 26–28. Peter McCormick, “Social Contract: Interpretation and Misinterpretation,” Canadian Journal of Political Science 9, 1 (1976): 63–76, 63. Ibid., 63–64. Ibid., 66. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 65. See Onora O’Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 106–117. From Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, excerpted in Lessnoff’s Social Contract Theory, 87. See John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 112. I am indebted to McCormick for pointing out this passage. McCormick, 64. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by J. C. A. Gaskin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1651/1996), 82–86. From Hobbes’s Leviathan, as found in Lessnoff, 56. See McCormick, 66. Hobbes, Leviathan, from Lessnoff, 57. McCormick, 66. Rousseau, The Social Contract, chapter 6, from Lessnoff, 111–112. See H. S. Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings, Second (enlarged) ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970/1991), 79. Kant’s essay referred to here is “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply to Practice.’” Referred to hereafter as Kant, “On the Common Saying.” Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, from “The Theory of Right, Part II,” found in Kant: Political Writings, edited by Reiss, 137 (§ 44). Ibid., p. 139 (§ 46). See Onora O’Neill Constructions of Reason, 112. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, from Reiss, 140 (§ 47). Emphasis is in the original. Ibid. See O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, chapter 6, “Between Consenting Adults,” 105–125. First published in Philosophy and Public Affairs 14, 3 (Summer 1985): 252–77. Ibid., p. 109. Ibid. Rawls, Theory, 448. O’Neill, Constructions of Reason, 109.