Comments on: Rawls by Samuel Freeman

By: Dan Butt

Dan Butt — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:12:35 +0000

Re: 38

This is from the preface of the Pogge book:

“This book was originally published in German as John Rawls (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1994)… I am deeply grateful to Michelle Kosch, who has produced an outstanding translation. Taking advantage… [of a stay at ANU] I have worked through this translation carefully and, with much help from Rekha Nath, Ling Tong, Leif Wenar and Andrew Williams, updated and revised a great deal. Any discrepancies with the German text, for better or for worse, are my own responsibility.”

By: Amit

Amit — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:32:27 +0000

my earlier comment referred to greatzamfir’s , which used to be #20 and is now #22.

By: Thom Brooks

Thom Brooks — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:39:18 +0000

Re: 43

This is certainly true, although the case may be understated: even before 1900, the British Idealists—-no friends of utilitarianism—- were dominant (at least in the UK) (Green, Bradley, Bosanquet). So Hurka is certainly right, but perhaps even more so…

By: Tom Hurka

Tom Hurka — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 03:05:20 +0000

Re #32:

The ‘hundred year long domination of utilitarianism’? Nonsense. Hardly any significant moral philosophers between 1900 and 1950 were utilitarians. Rashdall, McTaggart, Moore, Joseph and others were ideal consequentialists (aka perfectionists); Prichard, Ross, Carritt, Broad, and Ewing were non-Kantian deontologists. Utilitarianism itself was widely taken to be decisively refuted.

And I personally think normative ethics and political philosophy were coming back anyway, independently of Rawls: there was already a revival going on before TOJ (Feinberg, Singer, etc.). He gave them a boost, obviously, but ‘practically reintroduced political philosophy and substantive normative theorizing’ is a gross exaggeration.

By: John Oberdiek

John Oberdiek — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 02:39:46 +0000

G. A. Cohen’s forthcoming book from Harvard is Rescuing Justice and Equality, and it includes chapters deriving from his Tanner lecture on incentives, his paper criticizing the Pareto principle, his paper criticizing Rawls’s exclusive focus on the basic structure, as well as from the “Facts and Principles” paper, but it also includes four other chapters plus an appendix in which he replies to critics. It is sure to give Rawlsians a lot to think—and worry!—about in the years to come.

By: Oran Moked

Oran Moked — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 01:35:57 +0000

‘Facts and Principles’ (or a version thereof) is as far as I recall an early chapter in the book, and the issues it addresses are indeed primarily methodological rather than substantive. But the bulk of the book engages directly with Rawls’s substantive positions on distributive justice. (I should add, though, that the methodological and substantive concerns are not unrelated: the remainder of the book rests to some extent on the argument of ‘Facts and Principles’.)

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:17:58 +0000

re: 37

I thought Cohen’s book was an elabouration of his 2003 P&PA article ‘Facts and Principles,’ which is more of an argument against the method of reflective equilibrium than against ToJ.

Someone familiar with one of the manuscripts floating around out there care to correct me?

By: Crooked Timber » » Rawls as Archaeologist

Crooked Timber » » Rawls as Archaeologist — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 20:11:24 +0000

[...] link will work for a very short time, I presume, but it’s curious to note that Samuel Freeman’s book on Rawls is currently ranked #9 in Amazon’s bestsellers list for titles in Archaeology. Why? posted on [...]

By: anon

anon — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:32:32 +0000

I will act on Harry’s enthusiastic review and read Freeman’s book over the holidays.

If it is the case, as no 23 Matt states, that
Pogge’s book is a translation from a work first published in 1994 then OUP are acting shady by not informing about that on their otherwise informative page here http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/ci=9780195136371 . Obviously, much has happened in the Rawls research since 1994 so despite the initial merits of the book it is bound to be lacking in some relevant regards, in comparison with the book by Freeman.

By: dm

dm — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:18:22 +0000

Cohen also has a book manuscript titled something like Saving Justice from Constructivism (although the tentative title seems to change periodically) which is not yet published but which he’s been teaching at seminars and previewing in talks for a while now. I’ve read parts of it, and that is where Cohen’s criticism of Rawls gets its most extensive elaboration.

By: Katherine

Katherine — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 12:19:46 +0000

Thanks Harry. I’ve had Anarchy, State and Utopia on my bookshelf for a while, so I figure it’s about time I peruse a decent range of differing views.

By: harry b

harry b — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:43:03 +0000

katherine – I’d guess he’s thinking of If You’re an Egalitarian, How Come You’re so Rich, which contains an excellent chapter (which makes the CB Lareau point, though in a different way) on the limits of pursuing justice through procedural methods. He also has an excellent but long paper (his Tanner lecture, so it must be free on the Tanner Lectures site) against the difference principle as an equality licensing principle (that’s imprecise, but I’m up early, and can’t render it more precise without more thought than I am capable of right now).

By: Katherine

Katherine — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 10:56:52 +0000

Artclone, do you have a name for that G A Cohen book? I’m seeing lots of “defence of Marx” style titles, but nothing specifically on Rawls. Thanks.

By: Amit

Amit — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 02:31:19 +0000

re: 20

cf. the bit of nerd-humour according to which TOJ is the transcendental deduction of American liberalism (or, variously, the Labour Party in 1963, the New Deal, etc.)

(Yes, yes, the theory is meant to be metaphysically neutral – Rorty actually takes this into account in his version of the joke by saying “Suppose one grants that Rawls is not attempting a transcendental deduction of American liberalism…”)

By: tim quick

tim quick — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:07:24 +0000

Forget philosophical substance for the moment, there are historical or cultural reasons Rawls is so significant. He practically reintroduced political philosophy and substantive normative theorizing to the English speaking world – and did so in opposition to the hundred year long domination of utilitarianism. And, as he went along, he developed a philosophical framework (“wide reflective equilibrium”, “moral overlapping consensus”, etc.) that provided a model of how to do substantive philosophical inquiry in (god, forgive me) a postmodern, suitably metaphysically neutral framework. He, also, reintroduced the reading of history in a substantive way – training a whole generation of significant moral and political philosophers – to analytic philosophy. Moreover, he did so as part of a process of arguing for a redefining the history of English language philosophy since Hobbes in a way that counter the reading central to metaphysical/epistemological reading foisted on us by earlier analytic philosophers. Or so I’d argue.