Objections to Rawls’s Political Conception of Persons

Campbell, Catherine Galko

doi:10.1007/978-94-007-7917-4_6

Catherine Galko Campbell²

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Abstract

Rawls intends his political conception of persons to pick out the features of persons that are important from the point of view of political theorizing. For Rawls, the features that are important are those that characterize persons as having the rights and capacities required to participate in political life. This chapter explains two kinds of criticisms of Rawls’s political conception of the person. First, critics claim that Rawls has failed to identify the features of persons that are politically-relevant. Second, independently of whether Rawls has correctly identified the features that are politically-relevant, critics argue that Rawls’s characterization of the features is problematic. I call these objections that are grounded in an alternative conception of political identity “normative objections.” According to the conception of political identity grounding these objections, one of the most important facts about persons from a political point of view is that they are socially constituted. Critics argue that this fact makes it the case that the government should be arranged in such a way as to foster a political climate that promotes the proper development of its citizens, and that the government should do so, inter alia, by adopting policies that take the fact persons’ identities are partially constituted by their social circumstances to be both fundamental and valuable. The chapter explains and clarifies these objections, and explains why these critics think their conception of political identity is preferable to Rawls’s.

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Notes

1.
Gutmann (1985, p. 313) .
2.
Ibid., p. 314.
3.
Sandel (1994, p. 192, 30) .
4.
In Appiah (2005, pp. 161–162) makes similar claims regarding the fact that, though liberals claim that they do not promote any particular way of life, they do promote civic virtues required for liberal society.
5.
Taylor (1985, p. 191) .
6.
Ibid., p. 196.
7.
Ibid., p. 197.
8.
Taylor (1979, p. 156) .
9.
Ibid., p. 157.
10.
Taylor (1985, p. 197) .
11.
Ibid., p. 193.
12.
Ibid.
13.
Ibid., p. 194.
14.
Ibid., p. 202.
15.
Ibid., p. 193.
16.
Ibid.
17.
Ibid., p. 195.
18.
I thank David Copp for discussion on this point.
19.
Ibid.
20.
Carse (1994, p. 202) .
21.
Carse (1994, p. 186) “The Liberal Individual,” p. 186.
22.
Kymlicka (1989a, p. 12) .
23.
Ibid., p. 50.
24.
Ibid., p. 49.
25.
Ibid.
26.
Sullivan (1982, p. 156) .
27.
Ibid., p. 157.
28.
Ibid.
29.
Ibid.
30.
Ibid., p. 158.
31.
Macedo (2000, p. 10).
32.
Macedo (1996, p. 240) . See also the discussion of empirical objections below.
33.
Ibid., p. 173.
34.
Beiner (1983, p. 152) .
35.
Crowley (1987, pp. 6–7) .
36.
Ibid., pp. 7–8.
37.
Ibid., pp. 238–39.
38.
Ibid., p. 282.
39.
Ibid., p. 294.
40.
Connolly (2000, p. 158) .
41.
Ibid., pp. 164–65.
42.
Deranty (2009, p. 395) .
43.
Ibid., pp. 400–401
44.
For Honneth’s critique see, for example, Axel Honneth (1995) Fraser and Honneth (2003) .
45.
For an interesting discussion on this point see Appiah (2005, p. 5, pp. 151–154) .
46.
Kymlicka (1989b, p. 898) .
47.
Ibid.
48.
Ibid., p. 894, quoting Raz (1986, p. 162) .
49.
Ibid.
50.
Ibid.
51.
Ibid.
52.
Ibid.
53.
Ibid., p. 895. Whether Kymlicka (1989b) is right that the state’s maintaining the cultural marketplace does not conflict with liberal neutrality is a difficult question, which would require a close examination of just what liberal neutrality requires. That examination is beyond the scope of this book. It does seem, though, at least prima facie plausible that a liberal state could promote a cultural marketplace without flouting the requirement of neutrality.
54.
Taylor (2011, p. 317) .
55.
Taylor (1989, p. 174) .
56.
Crowley (1987, p. 295) .
57.
Raz (1986, p. 162) .

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Department of Philosophy, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
Catherine Galko Campbell

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Campbell, C. (2014). Objections to Rawls’s Political Conception of Persons. In: Persons, Identity, and Political Theory. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7917-4_6

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7917-4_6
Published: 19 November 2013
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-7916-7
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-7917-4
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