john rawls and robert nozick?

[shorelinetrance]

I've been hearing these names a lot when I discourse and frankly I don't know how to argue against these ideas, mostly due to a lack of understanding within the realm of capitalist/liberal political philosophers, surely their ideas are relevant? What should I start reading by them so I can successfully argue against their ideas?

[apathy maybe]

Robert Nozick was full of bullshit. Not least that even if the present society could have come about by "morally legitimate" means, then that society is morally legitimate even if it came about by other means.

His major work Anarchy, State, and Utopia was full of many holes, picked apart by, among other people, Jonathan Wolff, who wrote Robert Nozick - Property, Justice and the Minimal State (USA: Stanford University Press, 1991) (I suggest reading both works). Indeed, if anyone seriously supports the ideas in that book, direct them to me and I'll take them down (though I don't have the book at hand, nor any other materials then the Internet).

As for John Rawls, I never studied his work directly. But if I remember correctly, it stems from classic liberalism, and is thus tainted by the same sort of crap as that, and similar sort of crap as welfare liberalism.

Basically, capitalism is shit, no matter how much sugar you try and put on top.

[GPDP]

The funny this is, Nozick later renounced his ideas, and embraced Rawls's concepts.

Wasn't Rawls what could be called a "modern" liberal, not a classical liberal, though? He strikes me as the kind of person a US left-liberal would look up to, were they to actually develop a theoretical framework for their beliefs, as opposed to the vague sentimentalism that passes for their politics.

[the questionist]

Not least that even if the present society could have come about by "morally legitimate" means, then that society is morally legitimate even if it came about by other means.




Would you mind elaborating this? I'm a bit confused by the meaning.

[Dros]

Nozick is a libertarian nutter who was full of shit by his own admission and Rawles is an idiotic liberal.

The most important thing about Rawles is that he invented the "veil of ignorance" concept (it's really dumb) and was basically a social democrat.

I would write more except that they both really disgust me. If you have questions about specific parts of their argument, feel free to pm me.

[apathy maybe]

Again, Rawls was a "welfare liberal", and is tainted by that crud.


Not least that even if the present society could have come about by "morally legitimate" means, then that society is morally legitimate even if it came about by other means.
Nozick said that. Basically, he "demonstrated' that a state could come about by "morally legitimate" means from his hypothesised "state of nature". As such, because it was possible to come to a scenario through "morally legitimate" means, then even if it didn't come to that way by those means, it is still "legitimate". The argument is bullshit.

[chegitz guevara]

Given how much modern American political discourse is situated around these two, it doesn't hurt to study them. I had to read both for my Economics of Poverty class. For the average American, you're not gonna have to know anything about them, but in the rarefied discourse of academia, you'll need to know them.

[shorelinetrance]

Given how much modern American political discourse is situated around these two, it doesn't hurt to study them. I had to read both for my Economics of Poverty class. For the average American, you're not gonna have to know anything about them, but in the rarefied discourse of academia, you'll need to know them.

good point, i can hold my own in discourse against most individuals but these academic types love to fellate rawls.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Rawls basically said that you can determine what kind of society is the ideal society by taking the following steps:

Get a bunch of average people together. Tell them that they can live in any kind of society they wish, but there's a catch: They don't know in advance which role they will play in that society. If it's a society with slaves and masters, they don't know if they'll be among the slaves or among the masters. If it's a society with rich and poor, then don't know if they will be among the rich or among the poor. This lack of knowledge is the "veil of ignorance" - you get to design your own society but then you are assigned a random role within that society.

Rawls argued that the ideal society is the kind of society that most people would design if they were asked to perform the above exercise. And that's a perfectly good argument.

There's just one problem: We don't actually know what kind of society most people would design if they were asked to perform the above exercise. I would design a communist society. Rawls thought most people would design a social democracy. But no one really knows, so the whole argument is useless.

[Raúl Duke]

Rawls argued that the ideal society is the kind of society that most people would design if they were asked to perform the above exercise. And that's a perfectly good argument.

There's just one problem: We don't actually know what kind of society most people would design if they were asked to perform the above exercise. I would design a communist society. Rawls thought most people would design a social democracy. But no one really knows, so the whole argument is useless.I think that it's a somewhat dumb argument. People's ideas of what an "ideal society" should be changes across the ages (there was a time when monarchy and feudalism was the "ideal", now we know better.) and differs from person (especially based on their class. Example: Slave owners like slavery, but slaves of course don't.).

[Schrödinger's Cat]

Libertarians tout Nozick in party pamphlets, which I dismiss since the man became a quasi-social liberal right before he died. His theories inevitably resulted in slavery being acceptable by the same methods feudalism creates serfs.

I haven't read Rawls.

[JimmyJazz]

The most important thing about Rawles is that he invented the "veil of ignorance" concept (it's really dumb)

How is it really dumb?


and was basically a social democrat.


Why does that matter? His ideas may (or may not) tend to bolster a politically liberal position, but there certainly isn't a 1:1 correlation between his philosophy and any one political ideology.

[ajs2007]

Can I speak up in defence (at least a little) of Rawls's "A Theory of Justice" which always seemed to me to be a serious, if ultimately flawed, attempt to provide a philosophical basis for liberalism. Rawls's view, and I think this is shared by many other liberal academics, was that the philosophical basis of liberalism is almost non-existent and at least he tried to do something about it.

The problem with AToJ is that Rawls smuggles his late 20th. C US liberal morals into his discussion. Rawls thinks that people under the veil of ignorance would choose a society very similar to the sort of society a late 20th. C US liberal would choose. Rawls, to his credit, realises the problems and tries to address it. It is quite amusing (I have a weird sense of humour) to see the knots he gets into to try to justify these liberal morals. He doesn't succeed of course. I think he had a second go in "Political Liberalism" which is even more convoluted than AToJ and fails there also.

AM in post #2 above got Nozick pretty much spot on in my view, although there are some interesting diversions (eg. on eating animals and on prohibition) in "Anarchy, State, & Utopia".

[GPDP]

That's pretty much what I get out of Rawls, too. As it stands, American "modern" liberalism is philosophically and theoretically bankrupt, and Rawls is one of the few modern thinkers who tried to give it that much-needed basis. I mean, for all the idiocy that comes out of, say, libertarianism, at least it has some philosophical and theoretical background, coming out of classical liberalism and its modern interpretations by the right-wing. Even conservatism has a pretty solid framework compared to liberalism today.

Of course, IMO, they all pale in comparison to socialism, but I'm not being biased at all! :D

[JimmyJazz]

Can someone please explain to me how Rawls' ToJ supports a politically liberal position? Is it simply that he doesn't mention the role of class struggle, or does something in his theory actually contradict socialism?

[ajs2007]

I think those are extremely interesting questions. My knowledge of Rawls is not extensive enough to give comprehensive answers I'm afraid.

My rusty memory of it is that the initial principles he derives are perfectly compatible with the abolition of private property and a socialist society. Precisely to avoid that, he introduces the concept of private property as he thinks people would want property in their ideal society. This is where I think he introduces the values and morals of his own outlook. Hence he comes up with a liberal democratic society with a right to private property as the ideal society (I'm grossly simplifying Rawls's complex argument here). As previously said, a group of people with different values would come up with a different society using Rawls's method which is a major flaw in his argument.

If I remember correctly, he doesn't mention class struggle in the Marxist sense, but I do think he alludes to it as something to be avoided, which is why he advocates the veil of ignorance in order to arrive at an ideal society without taking into account class interests. This contradicts my understanding of socialism, hence for me Rawls is prima facie contrary to socialism (and I think Rawls would agree with this), but, of course, there are many different views of what socialism is.

It could be argued that Rawls is a social democrat. He does have some interesting things to say about equality. I'm not sure I agree that he is a social-democrat. I don't see him agreeing with Bernstein or say the British social-democrat Tony Crosland, who both, I believe, considered themselves socialists.

It has crossed my mind that it would be interesting to pull apart ToJ and produce a Marxist version, but life is too short and there are more urgent matters I'd rather see sorted out.