Scholarship at UWindsor

On the Rawlsian Anthropology and the "Autonomous" Account

In his later major work, Political Liberalism, John Rawls argues for a “political conception of justice,” one that is intended to operate in a diverse and morally pluralistic polity. A crucial feature of this political conception of justice is its ability to supersede (nearly) all other morals claims. This is because the political conception of justice is intended to be “a freestanding view;” that is, it is intended to ground its own normative force without needing to appeal to any particular comprehensive doctrine or set of doctrines. Joseph Raz, in critiquing Rawls, claims that any given justification of political and/or moral values must cohere with a web of other values with which it competes. Moreover, for it to be practical, this kind of justification must account for how all of these values play into an account of human wellbeing. Rawls’ political conception of justice, then, must either surrender its autonomy or its practicality. Rawls can respond by pointing out then he, in fact, does have a political account of human wellbeing, what I call his “philosophical anthropology.” But Rawls may not be able to dodge Raz’s attack on these grounds. In this paper, I argue for a “dual aspect” account of Rawls’ “philosophical anthropology.” I claim that his philosophical anthropology assumes an ability to separate one’s moral character into two parts: the political and the personal. While this anthropology is not wholly metaphysical, I argue that it is metaphysical enough to compromise the autonomy of Rawls’ account. Once his understanding of human wellbeing is no longer autonomous, I claim that Rawls’ must admit that his account a) provides an account of human wellbeing that, b) is practical insofar as it can reckon with other moral and/or political values, but, c) is not autonomous. I conclude by claiming that while my analysis is not fatal to Rawls’ project, it may well force him to retreat to something along the lines of his “Kantian Interpretation” that was featured in A Theory of Justice.