Here's the deal: Rawls has 2 principles for organizing a society.
- First: Liberty: each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar liberty for others
- Second: Fairness. Equality of opportunity, marginal value (prefer marginal value for poor to MV for rich)
Posts
4 comments:
AGREED.
That this is ONE way to completely cook his goose.
I'm curious if there's any way this post takes Rawls more seriously than Moldbug's did!
MM at least gave him a longer treatment.
You both appear to judge that Rawls & Rawlsians are completely offbase.
MM gives everything a longer treatment. :-)
MM disputes whether Rawls's question/approach makes sense, and suggests it doesn't. Since it's damn near the same approach every philsopher (minus Neitzche and Machiavelli) has taken since Socrates...I don't take this response very seriously. It ignores not only Rawls, but 2500 years of philosophy.
WW accepts Rawls question, then discusses how Rawls's assumptions are cheating.
I say that accepting Rawls question and Rawls assumptions, he's still deeply wrong in his conclusions.
I consider that to be taking the topic more seriously.
Fair enough! That's an answer.
I still feel you could have titled your post "Short Shrift," but I'm no defender of Rawls.
I don't see Rawls as necessary precluding exit. Remember that in the great tradition of philosophy, Rawls' project is to justify the status quo, thereby earning status and money. One could emigrate from the USA of the 1960s.
Nozick's demolition of Rawls in Anarchy State and Utopia is much deeper than yours. He points out that any theory of "justice" -- righteousness -- which does not take history into account must necessary involve ongoing redistribution -- and that is incompatible with liberty.
(There is a lot more stuff in ASU too. Nozick thought the minimal state was justified -- his argument is worth reading as a caution. But the thing as a whole is a pleasure to read, or at least it was to me as a young man. Lots of thought-provoking stuff.)
As for MM, he does note in his piece that many others have had Rawls' head before him. I doubt he would disagree with Nozick on that. He is just making a different argument; one that appeals to his righty self: that having a theory of righteousness has no necessary connection whatsoever to what obtains in the world. If your theory of righteousness requires angels in the form of men, you are SOL. Of course Madison pointed this out long before MM, but he was not arguing with Rawls.
Post a Comment