Freedom and Equality in a Liberal Democratic State by Jasper Doomen - HTML preview

Chapter 14

1. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, p. 8.
2. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, pp. 9, 10.
3. In a way the problems seem even more dire than this since he starts with the ambition (vide note 1, supra) to realize democratic liberty and equality, so that the theory he will finally embrace must necessarily contain these values, so that he would appear to be arguing in a circle, finding such a (comprehensive) view by disqualifying others from the outset. However, this problem need not manifest itself. After all, a view that seeks to realize democratic liberty and equality from a non‘moral’ stance – such as mine – is also possible.
4. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, pp. 10, 13; Lecture IX, pp. 373, 374.
5. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, pp. 18, 19; cf. A Theory of Justice, § 77 (pp. 441-449).
6. In addition, he states: “[…] citizens are free in that they conceive of themselves and of one another as having the moral power to have a conception of the good”, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, p. 30. Such a definition is incompatible with that of negative freedom, and may be said to attest to a comprehensive view, although it must be granted that this comprehensive view is more general (or, put negatively, vaguer) than those comprehensive views which Rawls does not incorporate in his theory.
7. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture IV, p. 140.
8. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, p. 39.
9. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, pp. 482, 483.
10. He explicitly characterizes neutral institutions and policies as neutral “[…] in the sense that they can be endorsed by citizens generally as within the scope of a public conception”, J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture V, p. 192.
11. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture IV, pp. 147, 148.
12. Rosenfeld is right, then, when he observes: “By restricting participation in the elaboration in the elaboration of political justice to those who agree to ‘reasonable’ worldviews, Rawls insures the emergence of a sufficiently broad domain of overlapping consensus to allow for a workable array of political rights. He does this, however, at a very high cost. Indeed, on the one hand, what is ‘reasonable’ may be contested, but even if it is not, proponents of non-reasonable worldviews are excluded. From their standpoint, therefore, the political rights that emerge from an overlapping consensus are the equivalent to rights tied to a competing conception of the good that one thoroughly rejects. On the other hand, the linking of the ‘reasonable’ conceptions to the ‘overlapping consensus’, makes the process circular if not entirely superfluous”, “A Pluralist Theory of Political Rights in Times of Stress”, p. 16.
13. S. SCHEFFLER, “The Appeal of Political Liberalism”, p. 13.
14. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture IV, p. 147. Cf. Political Liberalism, Lecture I, p. 11: “While [a political conception] is, of course, a moral conception, it is a moral conception worked out for a specific kind of subject, namely, for political, social, and economic institutions.” In an accompanying footnote, Rawls says: “In saying that a conception is moral, I mean, among other things, that its content is given by certain ideals, principles and standards; and that these norms articulate certain values, in this case political values.” Depending on what Rawls means by ‘values’ here, he either adheres to a comprehensive view or eradicates those elements usually called ‘moral’. In the first case, the problems noticed above apply, while in the second case, the theory must be replaced by a less ambitious one.
15. I say ‘may be’ rather than ‘is’; ‘is’ would in fact imply a nihilistic outcome, viz., that it should be impossible for one view to be correct (whatever one takes this to mean) while being acknowledged by all (i.e., accepting it without being forced to do so). I am a skeptic in this regard, as the situation warrants lest an argumentum ad ignorantiam be committed: such an outcome cannot a priori be excluded, but that does not mean that it must be the case. The European Court of Human Rights appears to make a similar category mistake as Rawls when it observes: “As enshrined in Article 9 (art. 9), freedom of thought, conscience and religion is one of the foundations of a ‘democratic society’ within the meaning of the Convention. […] The pluralism indissociable from a democratic society, which has been dearly won over the centuries, depends on it”, Kokkinakis v. Greece (ECtHR, Application no. 14307/88, 1993). A liberal democratic society need not, however, exhibit pluralism, and certainly not a democratic society in general (unless one makes the mistake, addressed, inter alia, in section 1.3, of identifying ‘democracy’, which is, as I noted there, merely a form of government, with an ideal political situation (the Court does not, by the way, specify its conception of ‘democracy’ in this case). In any event, no pluralism exists if every citizen is convinced of the correctness of a single (world)view and adheres to it for that reason. So I would amend the Court’s statement to the one that the possibility of pluralism is indissociable from a liberal democratic society.
16. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture I, p. 37.
17. A similar conclusion is reached by Dyzenhaus: “The talk of the citizen which is now prominent in [Rawls’s] theory of justice, and of such citizens deliberating as to the values that should inform our common lives, is an attempt to make liberal theory into a theory of liberal democracy. But Rawls attempts to finesse the democratic element by making of democracy a political system governed more or less covertly by the values of liberalism as a comprehensive doctrine”, D. DYZENHAUS, “Liberalism after the Fall”, p. 26.
18. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture II, pp. 48-54.
19. E.g. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Introduction, pp. xvi, xxx; Lecture II, pp. 59-61.
20. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture IV, pp. 134-140.
21. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture II, p. 50.
22. J. RAWLS, Political Liberalism, Lecture IV, p. 147.
23. Th. SCANLON, The Difficulty of Tolerance, p. 193.
24. Apart from this consideration, the fact that one will (if caught) – presumably – be punished on the basis of penal legislation is of course an important given.
25. In chapter 10 I argued that legislators – in a liberal democratic state – are not appointed to be theologians, and I would add here, in a broader vein, that their task is not to inquire whether a doctrine is ‘true’.
26. Whether an actual zero-sum game applies in this case depends on the circumstances, specifically, whether employees’ performances may be influenced (positively) by an increase in salary.
27. Rawls says: “The philosophical conception of the person is replaced in political liberalism by the political conception of citizens as free and equal”, Political Liberalism, Lecture IX, p. 380. This is precisely what I have aspired to, but it can, with what was said