In the introduction to the paperback version of Political Liberalism, Rawls concludes by discussing what the overarching point or goal of his project is. He writes:
Philosophy may study political questions at many different levels of generality and abstractness, all valuable and significant. It may ask why it is wrong to attack civilians in war either from the air by ordinary bombs or atomic weapons. More generally, it may ask about just forms of constitutional arrangements and which kinds of questions properly belong to constitutional politics. More generally still, it may ask whether a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible and what makes it so. I don’t say that the more general questions are the most philosophical, nor that they are more important. All these questions and their answers, so far as we can find them, bear on one another and work together to add to the knowledge of philosophy.[2]
Notice how political philosophy in its most general and abstract form seems to be quite different from the underlying account of political philosophy that Forrester presumes, where the goal of the philosopher of public affairs is to offer concrete advice to remedy pressing problems such as global inequality or overpopulation. Instead, the task is to construct a sort of possibility proof of the kind mathematicians or theoretical economists might pursue. Just as a mathematician tries to show that a certain mathematical object with interesting properties exists, or a theoretical economist might try to show that there exists a certain kind of equilibrium solution for a particular class of games, Rawls is trying to show that a certain kind of society—a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy—can, in fact, exist. As Burton Dreben, one of Rawls’s friends and a great interpreter of his work describes the project: “What Rawls has primarily been doing for the last twenty years is engage in a certain kind of very complex conceptual analysis, namely, he has been investigating the question, Is the notion of a constitutional liberal democracy internally consistent or coherent? Is it conceptually and logically possible to have as an ideal—it’s not even a question of how to bring it about.”--Brian Kogelmann reviewing In the Shadow of Justice: Postwar Liberalism and the Remaking of Political Philosophy (2019), by Katrina Forrester in The New Rambler [HT Matt Lister]
Yesterday (see here) Matt Lister nudged me toward Kogelmann's fascinating review of Forrester. Unlike Freeman's review, Kogelmann's provide a sufficiently accurate and helpful summary so that the reader can decide whether they ought to read the book. In addition, without actually stating the book's official aim, recall [I] "the book is about the politics of political philosophy and the political implications of conceptual choices," (xxi), Kogelmann's review actually says quite a bit about the book such that the second half of that aim comes into clear view such that the reader of Kogelmann's essay has a sence of what Forrester is up to. Below I return to discuss the substance of that.
Despite appearances to contrary, it's not my life's mission to 'score' philosophy book reviews. But I do find it interesting that a book that states prominently and early that it is about the "politics of political philosophy" fails to elicit discussion among philosophers about her analysis of the politics of political philosophy. I have now read five reviews by philosophers of the book, and of these only Lea Ypi mentions it (here) in her very interesting review without really exploring Forrester's views on the politics of political philosophy. Whereas non-philosophers (political theorists and intellectual historians, etc) have no trouble engaging with this theme. Feel free to call my attention to reviews by philosophers that I have missed that do engage with what she has to say about the politics of political philosophy.
As an aside, I find this state of affairs baffling. Philosophers of science (Liam Kofi Bright, Cailin O'Connor, etc) and feminists (e.g., Dotson) have brought different kinds of versions and models of (what we may call) the sociology of knowledge to bear on philosophy itself in journals and even in widely read blogs. And even those who don't write or read these works, are familiar enough in thinking about philosophy in Kuhnian terms. And given that many political philosophers teach in PPE programs, it is odd that they would be so unwilling to engage with scholarship that suggests that a philosophical status quo is itself the effect of the complex interaction between arguments and social environment (recall my treatment of p. 257 in yesterday's post), and what we might call the attractor effects of an established paradigm, as Forrester suggests.
In fact -- and now back to Forrester -- Forrester explicitly and repeatedly treats Rawlsianism as a philosophical paradigm (xx, 150, 174--I am sure I have missed a few (she also uses 'framework' sometimes); she also very often talks of a "distributive paradigm."). And she suggests that the uptake of Rawls' book was facilitated by the network he was in and their efforts. In fact she suggests her book will show two distinct further theses:
Just as often, rival political visions or arguments were not rejected outright, but domesticated and accommodated within the liberal egalitarian paradigm—often in a way that diffused their force. As subsequent generations built on the arguments of their forebears, a philosophical paradigm took on a political shape that none of its discrete theorists might have intended. (xx)
That is, first, once Rawlsianism become hegemonic it was capable of diffusing challenges by incorporating some of their insights (on domestication, see also p. 207 & 230). In a different context I have claimed (recall here; here) this sponge-like quality is not just a feature of the liberal egalitarian paradigm, but of analytic philosophy as such once it was safely ensconced in philosophy departments without serious rivals. The politics of analytic philosophy rarely figure in the book (except when she is discussing Wittgensteinian influence on early Rawls) under that guise, but Forrester alerts the reader in a few footnotes to work by Joel Isaac that she is aware of its significant to her story (but see also p. 131; 244). My own view is that Rawlsianism became hegemonic has a lot to do with the character of analytic philosophy in the 1960s. (About that soon.)
And second she claims in rather deflationary fashion that even if Rawls were a self-conscious philosophical legislator (something she is really rather mum about--she does not discuss the significance of his lectures and his PhD training to the formation of a Rawlsian 'school'), most of what became Rawslianism is the unintended effect of philosophical debates with critics and alternative approaches in light of shifting contexts. This (I almost called it a 'Hayekian') theory of the intellectual market place helps explain why after she has discussed the period leading up to the 1971 of Theory of Justice, in her treatment Rawls himself often disappears in his own shadow.
Okay let me now turn back to Kogelmann. He notes perceptively that whatever the aims of Forrester's approach to Rawls are, and like all readers he has picked up on important strains of criticism, she may not be doing justice to Rawls' own views. To put it in terms of the historian's craft, if she were writing about Rawls' aims then she has violated the injunction to use actor's categories. (I think that's neat aspect of his criticism quoted above.) But Forrester is not very interested in Rawls' intentions, but in the construction of a Rawlsian paradigm by a community of scholars. And Kogelmann charitably reads her as claiming to be following norms of that paradigm (namely that political philosophy shouldn't merely clarify political problems but also "bring them to a resolution."*) The first sentence of his review I quoted above comes after a paragraph in which he grants that "this general vision of what the philosopher should do is widely adopted among the discipline’s practitioners."
Kogelmann is a bit too charitable here. I really wish Forrester had added a chapter in which she had come more clean on her own (normative) framework in evaluating the success or failure of Rawlsianism. Because it is not entirely clear what the rules of the game are here. After all, as she demonstrates in all kinds of ways, Rawlsianism was a resounding success within the politics of political philosophy: as she shows, even philosophers that rejected the content and methods of Rawls' project did end up using his vocabulary (and vice versa). As I joked yesterday, as she shows, Rawls' achievement is akin to the claim that in economics Koopmans, Marschak, Arrow, or Debreu got economists to use convex analysis; and it is no doubt that this acted as a formal constraint on what kind of economy could be imagined, or at least the vocabulary in which one must speak in order to advance in professional economics. (I return to this below.) So, it's not entirely transparent how her empirical work in (say) the sociology knowledge connects to her critical strain.
The purported political failure of Rawls according to her is that -- to simplify -- after Theory of Justice appeared, political life increasingly shifted away from Rawls' moral (and political) vision (chapter 7 is really a masterful treatment of this theme). Now, this is a very interesting general fact. This is one reason, for example, why I am myself much more interested in liberal programs that did sometimes manage to shape in some ways political outcomes (ordoliberalism, chicago school, public choice, law and economics, third way, etc.) But for all my great admiration for her book, Forrester really has not earned this conclusion because she has not really studied how Rawlsians tried to shape health care (e.g., Norman Daniels), the law (Nussbaum barely registers), and other areas of public policy. (She acknowledges this in response to critics here.) If the two parts of [I], "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," are connected it is not obvious from her book how. To make a (Schumpeterian) joke: winning the philosophical argument may be the worst possible predictor of the capacity to shape politics. And if Plato, Madison, and Smith are right one should not expect that at all (okay, sorry that was advertisement for my book).
It's also not clear why she thinks political philosophy can shape political outcomes given that she generally seems to think and argue it's the social environment that shapes and even partially determines political philosophy (and so makes it un-dangerous to the status quo), especially at the "elite institutions" (xvii) she is primarily interested in (again this exchange is very good about this).** And, to be fair, we don't criticize Hobbes for not preventing the messy mixed constitution of the Glorious Revolution (be grateful for small mercies, I say) nor do we criticize Olympe de Gouges for not preventing that mass democracy was gendered male for centuries (we praise her for her prescience and courage!).
Okay, let me wrap up with a three comments on Kogelmann's Rawlsian counter proposal from the paperback version of Political Liberalism, and then one on the significance of this to Forrester's argument. (Only the third will be critical.) Now, at first sight it seems Kogelmann is begging the question against Forrester's approach; for Rawls' own views have no special standing here (see above). Yet, I have come to think it is actually a fair response to Forrester's argument, but not convincing. For, it's fair because it actually presupposes something important about how in [I] "the politics of political philosophy" and "the political implications of conceptual choices," could be connected. (And as we will see I don't think Forrester herself has a compelling story.) For, one can reformulate Kogelmann's position in light of Forrester's book as follows: winning the politics of political philosophy, and by building on A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, allows a community to establish with its tools that it is "possible in a world of reasonable yet nonetheless insurmountable and irreconcilable disagreement for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist[.]" And, for Kogelmann (and Rawls) this will have beneficial political implications.
For, second, and in fact, by 'possibility' Kogelmann interprets Rawls to mean something like what the economist means by an 'existence proof.'+ (I return to that below.) And then he glosses this as follows: "it is possible generally speaking for a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy to exist, regardless of the particularities of a county’s circumstances and history. But proving the general claim requires we abstract away from current political realities, contra Forrester...Rawls’s project is not to show that a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible for a society populated by knaves. Rather, he wants to show that such a political order is consistent with human nature when at its best...[without] to idealize away all our blemishes." And this possibility, when established by the Rawlsian paradigm, can influence people: "citizens will be influenced by the arguments of political philosophers, and this will have a down-the-road and very distant impact on the kinds of policies and laws that are eventually implemented."++ It's not entirely clear if we are supposed to believe that citizens will be expected to be influenced by reading Rawls (like the citizens of a Hobbesian commonwealth must read Leviathan, etc.) or, perhaps more likely, if the influence is supposed to trickle down through mediators.
Third, what is odd about Kogelmann's position is that nobody alive thinks that the economists' existence proofs or their arguments will convince citizens of anything. And since the analogy to existence proofs in game theory is so important to Kogelmann, let me quote a pre-eminent game-theorist on why he avoids using Rawls' framework; when confronted by Theory of Justice, even economists noted that as a model of political life it left out something very important. Aumann (who I usually do not cite approvingly) writes:
Criteria of equity that do not take power considerations into account have a pleasing air of symmetry and abstract perfection; they appeal to our philosophical, ethical senses. But what would make society adopt such criteria? And even if adopted, what chance do they have of surviving the attacks of pressure groups, large and small? For better or for worse, economic realities are dictated not by ethical considerations, but by the exercise of economic power. (Robert J. Aumann (1976) "Values of Markets with a Continuum of Traders," 621; notice that this does not require that everyone is a knave, but that the rich and other rent-seekers may well be.)++
Notice that I am not treating Aumann as an authority on philosophy. Rather, to put this in jargon: I take what Aumann is suggesting is that while it is true that "belief in what is possible or impossible affects [citizens'] thoughts and attitudes," the transmission mechanism that Kogelman assumes from Rawls' arguments to citizen influence goes in the face of everything we know about political life. So, rather than inspiring political hope, Rawls' can only be appreciated aesthetically, as it were, for the artistry of the proof. Again, to put it as a serious joke: Kogelman's Rawls assumes a kind of invisible hand mechanism such that right arguments magically or mysteriously will win out in political life. I actually mention this because I also suspect this criticism can be lodged against Forrester's own views.
In a way, the remark by Dreben quoted by Kogelmannactually suggests the same. Rawls' possibility proofs are disassociated from "how to bring it about." Quite right. (I should note that a natural reading of Political Liberalism suggests that Rawls is highly aware that local political traditions can matter greatly to the conceptual engineer. But this does not fit Kogelmann's proposal.)
Third, Kogelmann recognizes something like this objection. And he has an implied response by way of a quote from Rawls on the fall of Weimar: "A cause of the fall of Weimar’s constitutional regime was that none of the traditional elites of Germany supported its constitution or were willing to cooperate to make it work. They no longer believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible." Friends have repeatedly quoted this to me, too. And I can see why people find it beautiful and tragic (as Kogelmann does). But while something like this may have been true of German Marxists -- they thought that the fall of Weimar was demonstrated by science --, this claim is not true of the 'traditional elites' in the sense required for Rawls and Kogelmann. In so far as German traditional elites then ever believed a decent liberal parliamentary regime was possible (and it's not obvious many did), these gave up on it for reasons having nothing to do with philosophy but everything to do with the state of the economy, the street violence, the intimidation (including assassination), reparations required by Versailles' treaty, and a host of other issues not least that it was unclear to them how democracy could defend itself against its enemies while staying democratic. (Popper, of all people, gets this right.)
So, finally, while Kogelmann has a serious response to Forrester's position, and even thereby finds a way of showing how the elements of [I] might be connected, I don't think anyone ought to be persuaded by it, especially if one takes Forrester's approach seriously. But this leaves as an open question what, if one takes her historical arguments seriously, the lessons of her argument are for a political philosophy worth having in light of the necessity of the politics of political philosophy and an interest in having these conclusions shape political life. To be continued.
*Kogelmann is quoting the founding statement of Philosophy and Public Affairs here, quoted on p. 73 of Forrester's book. I agree it's very important step in her argument.
**Also do read Alyssa Battistoni's essay which also includes this gem: "The paradox is that the book at times performs elements of what it critiques, reinscribing the centrality of Rawlsian approaches even as it aims to question them."
+If one were interested in Rawls' views on this, it is worth asking if this conception of his project really is in Theory of Justice.
++I thank Ali M. Khan for calling my attention to this Aumann article.
Maybe a just and well-ordered constitutional democracy is possible. I certainly think it is. But is it desirable? Say we saw it as comparable to a fair game (one called, oh, "Justice as Fairness"). That is surely possible; just think of the many sports leagues. It's not at all desirable, though, since it would fail to take politics seriously.
Posted by: Charles Blattberg | 01/22/2022 at 03:49 AM