EJPT

Article

Rawls on the embedded self:

Liberalism as an affective
regime

European Journal of Political Theory

2015, Vol. 14(2) 209228
! The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885114554466
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Kiran Banerjee and Jeffrey Bercuson

University of Toronto, Canada

Abstract
In recent years, political theorists have come to recognize the central role of affect in
social and political life. A host of scholars, coming from a number of distinct traditions,
have variously drawn our attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition
of the history of political thought, as well as to normative political theory. This attentiveness to affect is often cast as a break with earlier, Enlightenment-inspired liberal
approaches towards politics, approaches that marginalized the emotions, dismissing the
passions as potentially dangerous, or neglected them altogether. According to the conventional liberal view, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while
proceduralist institutions abstract away from citizens affective attachments, now cast as
private preferences of individuals qua citizens. In this paper we challenge this prevalent
view. We argue that no less a liberal theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the
place of emotions in his account of liberalism. This may seem counterintuitive given that
Rawls work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory, as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and
reasonableness in his account of liberal justice. However, against this prevalent reading,
we demonstrate that Rawls is in fact highly concerned with the role of affect and
presents us with an account of the embedded liberal subject. By drawing out these
dimensions of Rawls thought, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view
of liberalism as affect-blind in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the liberal
tradition.
Keywords
John Rawls, emotions, justice as fairness, liberalism, affect

Corresponding author:
Kiran Banerjee, University of Toronto, 100 St. George St., Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada.
Email: k.banerjee@utoronto.ca

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Introduction
As part of a broader turn within the discipline, political theorists have increasingly
come to recognize the central role of aect in social and political life; indeed, many
scholars, coming from a number of distinct theoretical traditions, have drawn our
attention to the importance of the emotions to the tradition of the history of
political thought as well as to normative political theory.1 This attentiveness to
aect is often cast as a break with earlier, primarily Enlightenment-inspired liberal
approaches towards politics. On such a view, liberalism and liberal theorists have a
deeply ingrained tendency to either neglect or marginalize the emotions, dismissing
aect as inconsequential or as potentially dangerous.2 The view of liberalism as a
project committed to distancing politics from the passions is often characterized as
anchoring political life in deliberative public reason and a neutralist state.
Consequently, according to such a portrayal of contemporary liberal theory, emotions are said to have no place in the public sphere, while proceduralist institutions
abstract away from the aective attachments, now cast as private preferences, of
individuals qua citizens. Emotions, so the argument goes, ought not to have any
place in the consideration of liberal principles of justice or in the design of political
institutions. Here we challenge this prevalent view. We argue that no less a liberal
theorist than John Rawls is deeply attentive to the place of emotions in his account
of liberalism. In doing so, we hope to contribute to upending the conventional view
of liberalism as aect-blind, in order to encourage a more nuanced reading of the
liberal tradition more generally.

Rawls unreasonable rationalism?

Casting Rawls as a theorist sensitive to aect and emotional experience may strike
many readers as counterintuitive. Indeed, Rawls work has been frequently criticized for epitomizing some of the deepest problems of contemporary liberal theory,
as a result of the emphasis on rationalism and reasonableness in his account of
liberal justice. Whether a residual of his earlier attempt to bring rationality and
justice together, or a consequence of the explicitly neo-Kantian foundations of his
political thought, Rawls has frequently been taken to be guilty of the propensity of
contemporary theory to ignore or marginalize the emotions.3 Far from attending to
the embedded and aective dimensions of human nature, so this argument goes,
Rawls is an exemplar of the misguided liberal propensity to articulate a politics of
illusory neutrality grounded in a deracinated and unencumbered understanding of
the individual.
Indeed, it is precisely this perspective on Rawls that has informed a number of
prominent critiques of Rawls account of justice. In order to situate our own reading, it is helpful to sketch this prevalent interpretation of the Rawlsian project,
from its beginnings in the initial critical response to A Theory of Justice (hereafter
TJ) to more recent challenges from communitarian, feminist, Marxist, and realist
perspectives. This important, and by no means marginal, understanding of Rawls
project, which focused primarily on the conceptual architecture of the rst two

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parts of TJ, characterized much of the early reception of Rawls work, on the sides
of both critics and defenders. In this reading, the main task of TJ was to oer a
conception of justice that generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction
the central insights of the liberal contractual tradition, in order to justify fundamental principles to govern the institutions and basic structure of society.4
To generate such principles, Rawls asks us to imagine an original position of
rational and mutually disinterested individuals tasked with choosing principles of
justice, under the condition of a veil of ignorance requiring them to bracket morally
arbitrary facts, such as their individual characteristics and talents, as well as knowledge of their own actual position and status within society. Under such circumstances, Rawls suggests that the parties would select two principles of justice:
legitimate political institutions must secure the basic liberties of persons in the
most extensive manner possible, and they must arrange social and economic
inequalities so that they are conducive to both fair equality of opportunity and
to the maximum improvement of the socioeconomic condition of societys least
advantaged.5 The latter principle, known as the dierence principle, specically tied
TJs commitment to relative economic egalitarianism to the rationalist assumptions
of decision theory, suggesting that under the conditions of uncertainty meant to
model an appropriate moral situation, individuals would choose a distributive
paradigm that would severely curtail inequalities, only allowing them if they beneted the standing of the representative least well-o individual. Indeed, Rawls
appeared to claim that the general project of TJ was itself a part, perhaps the
most important part, of the theory of rational choice, suggesting that a central
aspect of his project was to marry rational self-interest maximization and justice.6
Picking up on Rawls emphasis on rationality in his attempt to articulate a
decision procedure for principles of liberal justice, a number of works in the
early critical literature focused on whether Rawls principles of justice were in
fact congruent with the assumptions of rational choice. Scholars, such as the utilitarian John Harsanyi, as well as more sympathetic writers such as James Fishkin
and Allan Buchanan, criticized various aspects of Rawls rationality assumptions,
asking whether they in fact would lead to the adoption of Rawls conception of
justice.7 Would the dierence principle in fact be the outcome of a rational decision
procedure under the original positions conditions of uncertainty? Did Rawls argument rely upon an implausible model of rational choice, or did his account smuggle
in dubious assumptions about the signicance of the diminishing marginal value of
Rawlsian primary basic goods? Key features of this broader perspective and critical
reception of Rawls project concern his purported insistence on the need to abstract
away from the particular features and social positions of individuals, as well as his
attempt to graft aspects of rational choice theory to his account of the original
position.
It was precisely this focus on rationality and abstraction that motivated some of
the strongest critiques of those who dissented from the Rawlsian project. Early on,
the libertarian theorist Robert Nozick raised doubts about the implications of the
original position, suggesting that the dierence principle generated by this device of
representation violated the projects purportedly Kantian commitment to the

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integrity of the person.8 This was because it appeared to take a persons individual
attributes and talents as a collective good, thereby seeming to treat individuals as
mere means. In a similar vein, communitarian theorists, such as Michael Sandel,
objected to what they took as an unrealistic and highly problematic concept of the
human subject at the centre of Rawls approach.9 According to Sandel, as a result
of the projects problematic Kantian legacy, Rawls attempt to develop a deontological liberalism presupposed an unencumbered noumenal moral agent and with
that a conception of the individual that deeply misrepresents our status as socially
embedded and embodied beings.
Feminist critics, such as Susan Okin, Iris Young, and Amy Baehr, saw cause for
concern in what they saw as Rawls tendency to privilege reason and abstraction in
his account of justice.10 If the original position as a device of representation was
supposed to model features relevant to the subject of justice in liberal societies, the
emotions, gender, and the family were curiously absent from the Rawlsian picture.
For Okin in particular, the diculties apparent in Rawls project were largely a
result of his Kantian assumptions regarding rationality and autonomy, leading him
to neglect the role of the human qualities of empathy and benevolence in establishing principles of justice.11
Drawing inspiration from the feminist critique of Rawls, G.A. Cohen criticized
Rawls project from a Marxist perspective, arguing that there is a tension between
the sense of justice that would characterize a just society and the appeal to selfinterest implicit in Rawls account of the rationality of his principles of justice.
Rather, pace Rawls, according to Cohen a just society requires an ethos of justice
that supports equality enabling choices and such an ethos must go beyond narrow
self-interest.12 Underlying Cohens critique were deeper worries regarding the
motivational resources of Rawls project and whether a truly just society would
need to rely upon rational incentives such as the permissible inequalities of the
dierence principle to motivate just action.
Most recently, scholars self-identifying themselves with a realist undercurrent
in political theory have raised similar criticisms regarding the content and legacy of
Rawls project. Thus, William Galston has attacked the apparent inattentiveness to
the emotions in the high liberalism that he claims has come to dominate much of
contemporary theory.13 For Galston, Rawls project as a whole exemplies this
pervasive lack of psychological and motivational realism that he nds endemic to
the political moralism characteristic of such approaches. This is because, as
Galston asserts, Rawls and his fellow high liberals generally leave out an entire
dimension of the human psyche namely, the passions and emotions from their
accounts of political justice.14 According to the realist perspective, such an omission constitutes a serious and enduring drawback of the Rawlsian project, one that
can only have lead to a highly distorted vision of politics.
But is Rawls quite the arch-rationalist that these prevalent readings seem to
suggest? Does Rawls in fact provide us with an account of justice grounded in
an abstract, unencumbered self, in which the embodied and aective dimensions of
human experience have no place? Contrary to the prevalent view implicit in these

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critiques, we argue that Rawls is in fact attentive to the role of emotions in the
political lives of citizens and that aect has a central place in his understanding of
the liberal regime.

Rawlsian sentimentalism
In line with the reading that we propose, in recent years there has been a notable
increase in scholarly attention to the presence of the emotions in Rawls political
philosophy.15 As we have already noted, this is emblematic of a more general turn
towards aect in political theory. Michael Frazer and Sharon Krause, in particular,
are on the vanguard of this reappraisal of Rawls. In this section, we will focus our
attention on an important contribution by each thinker: Frazers John Rawls:
Between Two Enlightenments and Krauses Desiring Justice: Motivation and
Justication in Rawls and Habermas.16 While both authors are exactly right to
emphasize the centrality of aect in the landscape of justice as fairness, it is our
contention that Frazer and Krause only tell a part (albeit an important, underappreciated part) of the story. In what follows, we hope to give a more thorough
and complete picture of Rawls thinking on the role of aect in political philosophy
and in political life.
What, then, are the merits and limitations of this more recent account? At rst
glance, it seems to be the case, according to Krause and Frazer, that Rawls treats
the emotions as a kind of post hoc justicatory mechanism: citizens look back upon
the principles (and institutions) that govern them, hopeful that these social structures are worthy of their assent as free and equal persons. Reection, in other
words, is not exclusively a matter of rational reection, of the hierarchical privileging of our true, noumenal self over our contingent emotions and attachments. On
this sentimentalist account, our chosen principles of justice have normative authority because of their compatibility with both the exercise of reason and the complex
emotional psychology characteristic of human beings; again, our concern for justice is both a display [of our] independence from the accidental circumstances of our
world and of our natural sympathy with other persons and an innate susceptibility
to the pleasures of fellow feeling.17 Frazer and Krause are thus (rightly) engaged in
the attempt to re-embody Rawls: the principles of justice are justied (in part) by
virtue of their compatibility with the kinds of emotions citizens actually happen to
have. There is no sense, in other words, that the possibility of justice depends on the
transcendence of our empirical, contingent, aective selves.
Of course, there are important, insuperable limits to the justicatory work that
the emotions can do. This, according to Frazer, is a conspicuously Humean
moment in Rawls political philosophy:
The fact that we can have higher order moral sentiments that we can approve or
disapprove of our own of our approval and disapproval allows for a process of
reection in which the mind as a whole repeatedly turns on itself as a whole, and
winnows out those sentiments which cannot pass the test of reection.18

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This reason-emotion dialectic is captured by the Rawlsian notion of reective

equilibrium: the elaboration and adaptation of justice principles is, according to
this sentimentalist re-reading of Rawls, the product of the mutual adjustment and
enlargement of reason and aect as we collectively argue and reect upon what a
just political community ought to be like.19 The outcome of this process must be
acceptable to our thoroughly interrogated, and therefore rightly authoritative, reasons and emotions. Not any reason can function as the justicatory basis of a given
principle, law, or policy: reasons must respect the freedom and equality of all
citizens. And the same goes for the emotions: only those politically constructive
emotions, such as our natural sympathy for, and empathy with, our fellow citizens,
are the legitimate basis of political obligation. This is an important point worth
emphasizing: on this sentimentalist re-reading, it is our natural sense of empathy
that motivates our attachment to legitimate, other-regarding principles of justice.
We are attached to principles of justice, in other words, because they reect our
natural empathetic inclinations towards our fellows. Such sentiments then receive
institutionalized expression in the basic structure of society, that is, in the principleguided institutional structure that protects the freedom and equality of all citizens.
This is why the sense of justice itself is rightly thought of as an aective attachment.
Citizens commitment to the principles of justice (i.e. the sense of justice itself) is
thus conceived (in part) as the reective outgrowth of basic human emotions.20
This is the main thrust of Krauses argument too: To have a conception of the
good [. . .] is to have an aective attachment to it or a desire to realize it; hence
when we are rational we are also desiring.21 Elsewhere, Krause describes the sense
of justice itself as an aective attachment to the idea of being a just person and to
the good of justice.22 According to this reading of Rawls, citizens in a just liberal
regime are thus appropriately understood as desirous of justice. What both Frazer
and Krause thus recognize is that Rawls account of justice is implicated in the
politics of aect, and that the emotions always play a central role in providing the
motivational resources necessary in any stable, legitimate political community.
This reading therefore goes beyond earlier engagements with Rawls project,
which emphasized the exclusive place of reason and rationality in the choice of
justice principles, thereby neglecting the central role of the emotions in Theory. We
are reminded of Hume: Human nature [is] composd of two principal parts, which
are requisite in all its actions, the aections and understanding [. . .] these two
component parts of the mind [. . .] [are] uncompounded and inseparable.23 This
is a very important point: what Frazer and Krause both hope to show is that this
emphasis on aect is present in Rawls thought from the very beginning precisely
because of the ultimate inextricability of reason and aect. After all, the desire to
live with others on just terms, says Rawls in TJ, exercises a natural attraction upon
our aection and so the principles of justice themselves are conscientiously
designed to be continuous with our natural sentiments.24 This ought to correct
our initial (post hoc justicatory) impression of the role of aect in Rawls political
philosophy: far from oering a retrospective defence of the (mere) compatibility of
Rawls project with the aect turn in political theory, Frazer and Krause rightly
emphasize how an attentiveness to the role of emotion is present at the start of

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215

justice as fairness. In the section that follows we will take this important insight
even further.
It is patently the case, then, that the principles of justice are designed with
explicit reference to feeling, sentiment, and aect with emotions that citizens
actually happen to have, such as sympathy, empathy, care, trust, fellow-feeling,
and even love. Indeed, in a revealing moment in TJ, Rawls goes so far as to call
justice as fairness a theory of the moral sentiments.25 This lends Rawls theory an
additional basis of legitimacy and (by extension) of stability (for the right reasons).
Of course, stability occupies a central place in the landscape of Rawls thought:
beginning with TJ, Rawls stresses that stability is an essential part of justice that
choosing a conception of justice that is not stable is not justice.26 In fact, this
concern with stability is an under-appreciated part of Rawls argument against
utilitarianism: utilitarian principles involve strains of commitment that exceed
the capacity of human nature. That is, Rawls argues that we cannot accept a
lesser share of primary goods in the name of the good of the whole: human
nature itself is incompatible with utilitarian distributive outcomes.27
And so, we need to come up with a set of principles that beings like us, in
circumstances like ours, can adhere to in perpetuity. We must only consider principles and institutions that are practically possible and therefore stable given our
moral and psychological nature. Hence, Rawls concern with aect both as a limit
on our capacity to obey justice principles, and as a source of our motivation to
comply with them is present from the very beginning. We care about the principles of justice, and are motivated to act according to their dictates, precisely
because they take into account and reect our care for fellow citizens and our
aective attachment to the ideal of a just political community.28
Of course, this concern with stability is precisely what motives Rawls to revise
justice as fairness: the later doctrine, political liberalism, is necessary, so Rawls
thinking goes, precisely because of the instability to which justice as fairness would
be subject in a comprehensively plural society.29 Given the inevitable fact of irrevocable pluralism and the problems of legitimate coercion that arise as a result
Rawls wants us to think of his political conception of justice as freestanding not
as derived from a particular comprehensive point of view, but rather as embedded
within citizens reasonable religious, moral, and philosophical doctrines.30 Of
course, our purpose, here, is not to decide whether this move is convincing or
philosophically coherent; many suspect that it is not.31 Rather, given our purposes,
it is important to note that, in the later doctrine, Rawls still wants to harness the
aective resources of citizens. Indeed, the fact that the political conception of
justice is now embedded within citizens deeply held (but ultimately reasonable)
comprehensive doctrines constitutes another aective basis of motivation and of
stability; that is, we care about the principles of justice precisely because obedience
to them is a constitutive expression of our commitment to much more existentially
robust comprehensive doctrines.32
However, as we have already indicated, this is only a part of the story about the
role and place of the emotions in Rawls political philosophy. On our view, the
emotions do not merely function as a source of motivation to comply with justice

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principles. Rather, what we hope to show in the next section is that a liberal regime
is always already concerned with the aective dimension of citizenship, and that
justice as fairness in particular is better understood when we incorporate this
concern for the relationship between politics and aect in an even more robust
manner.

Institutions, affect, and the embedded self

While the recent turn towards the aective dimensions of Rawls project has
focused on how Rawls does recognize the need for desire, sentiment, and emotion
as motivational resources in his account of liberal justice, our reading of Rawls
wishes to push further in suggesting that at the core of Rawls project is an even
thicker conception of an embedded and aective subject. To demonstrate this, we
draw on the extra-Kantian resources of Rawls project. As we argue, the story
about Kant is not the whole story about Rawls: when we look at Rawls through
the lens of Rousseau and Hegel as well, we get a deeper and more accurate picture
of Rawls moral and political philosophy.33 Supplementing Rawls Kantian
inspired account of liberal autonomy is a richer relational conception of the
human subject. Indeed, far from being blind or indierent to the passions and
emotions, Rawls broader project is deeply attentive to the need to attend to the
aective dimensions of human beings. Not only do certain aective dispositions
play a central role as the legitimate bases and motivators of political obligations
but more importantly, the emotions play a constitutive part in the conception of
the subject at the centre of Rawls account. This moves the question of the place of
aect in Rawls theory beyond the motivational issues posed by a reason-driven
justicatory liberalism. Rather, as we indicate, Rawls conception of the just liberal
regime presupposes an inter-subjectively constituted and aectively attuned
individual.
What we nd in Rawls, then, is a theorist sensitive to the embedded nature of the
individual and the extent to which subjectivity is the by-product of political and
social relations; that is, for Rawls, subjectivity is always already inter-subjectivity.
In the end, we hope to decisively rebut those communitarian critics who disregard
justice as fairness because (in their view) it is based on a philosophically, psychologically, and metaphysically incoherent conception of the person.34 What is the
basis of this critical view? Contracting parties in the original position, recall, are
denied any information about their ends, values, or conceptions of the good; they
are, in other words, radically detached from any sense of particularity and from
their constitutive attachments. And so, according to his critics, Rawls takes for
granted or rather, he fully neglects, the extent to which individuals are fundamentally shaped by their social and political milieu; he subscribes to a kind of unencumbered, asocial individualism. How can contracting parties thus conceived
adequately reason about social justice?
This image of the asocial and unencumbered chooser of justice principles
which, as we have already seen, is so pervasive in the secondary literature on TJ
and Rawls more generally is, quite simply, wrong. In this spirit, we hope to show

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217

two things in the remainder of this section and in the paper more generally: (1) the
extent to which Rawls regards the self as deeply embedded in as importantly
determined by their social and political-institutional milieu and (2) the extent to
which Rawls regards these selves as deeply aective, as desirous of a certain kind of
recognition from the institutions that coerce them and from the fellows with whom
they are engaged in social cooperation. In the end, justice as fairness is best characterized by its attempt to secure the self-respect of citizens; and, for Rawls, proper
self-respect is not just a quality of individuals, it is a quality of the conguration of
societies.
In turning to the Rawlsian conception of the embedded self, this thicker conception of the human subject can be brought into sharper relief if we attend to
Rawls own critical engagement with the Kantian approach with which he is so
frequently identied; as we shall see, Rawls criticism of Kant opens up the interpretive space for the inuence of Rousseau and Hegel. Here, a crucial resource for
reconstructing Rawls view is his Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory; there,
Rawls both highlights Kants inuence on his thought and, more importantly given
our purposes here, attempts to distinguish the nature of his project from that found
in Kant. Whereas, on Rawls view, Kant is primarily concerned with moral individuals with the conscientious decision-making of individual moral agents
Rawls own theory of justice is concerned rst with the institutional contours of
social life: Justice as fairness assigns a certain primacy to the social. By contrast,
Kants account of the categorical imperative applies to the personal maxims of
sincere individuals in everyday life.35 In another telling passage, Rawls reiterates
his conscientious departure from this Kantian perspective:
Kant proceeds from the particular, even personal case of everyday life; he assumed
that this process carried out correctly would eventually yield a coherent and suciently complete system of principles, including principles of social justice. Justice as
fairness moves in quite the reverse fashion.36

It is of crucial importance, in Rawls account, that public justice justice at the

level of institutions comes rst. And Rawls ultimately justies the primacy of the
political with reference to the educative function fullled by principle-guided institutions; that is, we begin by focusing on institutions because of the educative and
socializing purposes fullled by them. Rawls simply doesnt see this in Kant: in his
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Rawls often draws attention to the
insuciently political character of Kants thought, that is, the extent to which
moral consciousness our sense of moral obligation transcends the contingencies
of social and political circumstance.37 And so, Rawls turns to Hegel, for whom the
rst principle of political philosophy is the deep social rootedness of people within
an established framework of their political and social institutions.38 This is precisely the appeal of Hegels moral and political philosophy for Rawls: TJ follows
Hegel when it takes the basic structure of society as the rst subject of justice.39
Unlike Kant,40 and like Hegel, Rawls is deeply concerned with the educative role of

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institutions their constitutive role in forming both the background conditions of

social life and liberal citizens.
Indeed, Hegels view of freedom is distinctively institutional.41 This connects,
says Rawls, with [Hegels] view of persons as rooted in and fashioned by the system
of political and social institutions under which they live.42 Of course, this Hegelian
view is a response to it is a direct critique of Kants transcendentalism: freedom
is realized not in the pangs of the abstract and isolated conscience but in the world,
through political and social institutions at a particular historical moment.43 In
other words, Hegel rejects the Kantian view that one is capable of genuine moral
freedom by virtue exclusively of ones humanity and the concomitant possession of
conscience; moral freedom is indivisible from the political institutional conditions
in which it develops and evolves. Principle-guided institutions lead us to an idea of
ourselves and of our fellows as capable of certain kinds of action and as worthy of
certain kinds of treatment. We have freedom, in other words, because political
institutions recognize (and concomitantly institutionalize) our dignity as persons
who are free.44
This is where the Hegelian inuence on justice as fairness emerges in its clearest
light. Rawls follows Hegel in the belief that the basic structure is the rst subject
of justice because of the profound eects of these institutions on the kinds of
persons we are.45 What Rawls recognizes is the powerful and pervasive eects
of institutions, which always already deeply shape the moral psychology of citizens
and so necessarily have a transformative eect on the character and ethos of those
subject to their coercive eects. Rawls most explicit statement of the socializing
function of principle-guided institutions is to be found in Book I of Political
Liberalism:
Think of the principles of justice [and the political institutions established in light of
them] as designed to form the social world in which our character and our conception
of ourselves as persons are rst acquired. These principles must give priority to those
basic freedoms and opportunities in background institutions of civil society that
enable us to become free and equal citizens in the rst place, and to understand our
role as persons with that status [. . .] We have no prior identity before being in society.46

Political institutions (for Rawls as for Hegel) have decisive long-term social
eects and importantly shape the character and aims of the members of society,
the kinds of persons they are and want to be.47 Rawls and Hegel share the foundational belief that institutions (and their guiding principles) determine the kind of
people we become. Citizenship is the outcome of an educative process. If, as
Charles Taylor succinctly puts it, the doctrine of Sittlichkeit is that morality
reaches its completion in a community, then Rawls is better understood in light
of his engagement with Hegel.48
In a certain sense, then, the communitarian critics are right: the original position
is based on an unrealistically unencumbered conception of the person. But, unlike
the communitarians, we must avoid falling into a familiar trap in Rawls scholarship: treating the original position as representing some sort of philosophical

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anthropology or even as a kind of founding moment and not as a (mere) hypothetical thought experiment designed to represent, or model, our intuitions about
justice as they happen to have evolved over time.49 The centrality of the original
position in TJ is not in the end a claim about the possibility or desirability of
stripping away the social identity and attachments of citizens; neither does its
inclusion strip Rawls theory of its emphasis on the social-institutional constitution
of identity. While the abstract capacity for agency is, for Rawls, a central feature of
our moral life, it is not the only such feature: for Rawls, the relationship of citizens
is intrinsically social and other-oriented. It follows that the political problem is the
proper institutional support for salutary inter-subjective relations what Rawls
calls the social basis of self-respect. After all, for Rawls, self-respect is not only a
matter of having a secure sense of self, a secure sense that ones life has meaning,
and that one is well suited to pursue and revise ones system of ends. Self-respect
also has an inter-subjective or relational dimension: genuine self-respect requires
that our person and deeds [are] appreciated and conrmed by others who are
likewise esteemed [. . .] unless our endeavors are appreciated by our associates it
is impossible for us to maintain the conviction that they are worthwhile.50
As we have tried to indicate in the forgoing account, far from embracing an
implausibly disembodied and aectless subject of political life, Rawls not only
acknowledges these aspects of individuals but also insists that political and social
institutions harness these aective resources. Of course, the central claim of the
previous discussion that for Rawls individuals are constituted or determined by
principle-guided institutions presents a conspicuously one-sided image of political
life: it is easy to get the impression from it that egalitarian institutions are somehow
in place, and that these institutions are then able to full their educative or socializing function. But Rawls does not believe that political life begins in media res: we
must move beyond the constitution paradigm, according to which individuals are
spontaneously constituted (as liberal egalitarians) by their prevailing institutional
milieu, towards co-constitution. What, exactly, do we mean by co-constitution? We
hope to show in this section is that Rawls does not merely think of institutions as
educating citizens to a particular ideal of recognition and reciprocity (although he
certainly does think this). Rawls also thinks of persons as fundamentally subject to
the psychological need for recognition and for self-respect, which itself possesses a
powerful aective dimension in Rawls account: we desire to be recognized as
equals by the institutions that coerce us and by the fellows with whom we are
engaged in political cooperation, and it is these ideals of mutual recognition and
universal self-respect that inform and guide our shared political labours. In other
words, proper self-respect is congured through our relations with others and
through the sort of community in which we live.
Justice as fairness is therefore deeply implicated in the politics of recognition; the
ideal of self-respect at its core is characterized by an inter-subjective and aective
quality. Indeed, the extent to which justice as fairness is motivated by psychological
concerns namely, the need for recognition and for self-respect has not been fully
appreciated by Rawls interpreters and critics. And, in our view, this is the byproduct of the under-appreciated inuence of Rousseau on Rawls thought.

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Indeed, consciously following Rousseau,51 Rawls starts from the human proclivity
for interpersonal comparisons, accepts the negative consequences of unfavourable
comparisons and (still following Rousseau) includes these psychological tendencies
to compare and to feel shame as a fundamental consideration for constitutional
and institutional design. It is in this spirit that Rawls claims that self-respect is
perhaps the most important primary good.52 And, as we shall see in a moment,
like Rousseau, Rawls solution to the lack of recognition and, concomitantly, to
the lack of self-respect is to institutionalize the rights of citizenship in the basic
institutional structure of society.
This is a very important point: Rawls is not only deeply interested in the mental
states of citizens, he also recognizes the political salience of socially destructive
psychological sentiments, such as envy and shame. Such feelings are often associated with inequalities of political and social status. In other words, envy-producing arrangements undermine the empathetic identications necessary for stable,
productive social cooperation; in Rawls mind, envy is the obverse (and deeply
counterproductive) psychic phenomenon of empathy. It follows that a constitutive
aim of justice as fairness is to negotiate the emergence of such sentiments.53
How are these destructive emotions mediated or prevented? On Rawls view, the
solution to the lack of recognition and to the concomitant lack of self-respect
among those disadvantaged members of society is to institutionalize political and
relative economic equality in the basic structure of society.54 Put otherwise, equality at the highest level at the level of citizenship is the social basis of selfrespect.55 Social and political conditions, in other words, are the fundamental
determinant of a persons self-respect: to be a citizen is to be secure about ones
place in society. Again, Rawls follows Rousseau: he gives us an institutional-basic
structure solution to the problem of socially destructive envy; he is permanently
sensitive to all the ways in which self-respect is potentially undermined by inegalitarian political and economic institutions, and of the ways in which empathetic
identication is undermined by envy-generating arrangements.56
It follows that a central purpose of justice as fairness is to mitigate the natural
human propensity to envy, which undermines the stability of the political community. Envy, on Rawls view, is a reaction to the loss of self-respect in circumstances
where it would be unreasonable to expect someone to feel dierently.57 In this
vein, the interpretation of justice as fairness presented here emphasizes the principles of justice and the political institutions and distributive arrangements established in light of them as the essential source not only of autonomy but of intersubjectively grounded self-respect too, understood here as in part an aective disposition. Indeed, an essential dimension of Rawls project is to use principle-guided
institutions to combat the socially destructive forms of envy that arise due to the
lack of self-respect felt by societys least advantaged members. After all, according
to Rawls, the problem of envy cannot be permanently ignored in any theory of
justice: such sentiments do exist in society, as opposed to the information-decient
original position where envy has no basis. And, for Rawls, political institutions are
often the basic instigating cause of these sentiments. In this sense, Rawls views
liberalism as in part constituting an aective economy for its citizens living under

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a just liberal regime leads to the cultivation of emotions and aective attachments
appropriate to the psychology of mutual recognition.
Indeed, if the basic structure of society gives rise to feelings of pervasive envy
on account of the inequalities permitted by our principles of redistribution, say
this gives us reason to question those guiding principles. For feelings of envy, to
reiterate, may lead to mutually destructive policies and actions: The individual
who envies another is prepared to do things that make them both worse o, if only
the discrepancy between them is suciently reduced.58 And so it is with the spite of
the advantaged members of society also subject to the redistributive dierence
principle: The spiteful man is willing to give up something to maintain the distance
between himself and others.59 Envy, in other words, obscures the mutual (economic) advantageousness of social cooperation (when governed by fair principles
of justice). But Rawls does not spend much time contemplating the economic or
distributive consequences of widespread envy. Instead, his main concern is the
psychological consequences of unfavourable interpersonal comparisons.60 Again,
an essential function of political institutions is to support the self-esteem of citizens,
as grounded in egalitarian relations of mutual respect. And when individual selfesteem is secure, the pleasures of community are apparent: One who is condent in
himself is not grudging in the appreciation of others.61
There is, in Rawls thought, a kind of dialectic in operation (albeit one that will
never come to a complete resolution) between the natural psychological needs of
persons and the design of the basic structure of the political community. Hence, the
necessity of going beyond (mere) constitution towards co-constitution: institutions
educate, but the design of those institutions is fundamentally informed by it is a
response to the psychological needs of those subject to institutional coercion. We
are, simply put, naturally desirous of egalitarian recognition and of self-respect; we
need only recall the Rousseauian inspiration for Rawls characterization of selfrespect and self-esteem as basic primary goods. The more important point, however, is that both Rawls and Rousseau believe that self-respect and self-esteem are
sentiments that are most eectively satised by well-designed political and economic institutions. A just liberal society thus necessarily has an aective economy,
one that aims at securing the conditions of mutual respect, which are in turn the
necessary grounding for self-respect and self-esteem. This leads to a new, holistic
image of the historical evolution of this or that political community: our institutional milieu evolves from being a source of destabilizing envy on account of
political and radical economic inequalities to being the essential guarantor of
deeply sought after recognition and self-respect.62 Only the latter milieu is the
legitimate and likely object of citizens aective attachment.63 This insight has
important implications for the place of what we might call a liberal character or
ethos of justice in Rawls project.
As weve suggested earlier, far from enjoining us to embrace an unrealistically
simplistic conception of the human subject, at the centre of Rawls project is a
vision of individuals as both embodied as well as inter-subjectively and institutionally constituted. Moreover, Rawls not only acknowledges these aspects of individuals, but also repeatedly insists that political and social institutions harness these

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aective resources. Consequently, his project is highly attentive to the necessary

role of aect in enabling appropriate relations of reciprocity and mutual respect
among liberal citizens. What is more, these fundamental psychological needs of
citizens themselves possess an aective dimension; proper self-esteem and selfrespect are sentiments cultivated and supported by just liberal institutions. And
what is the mechanism for cultivating these dispositions for creating the conditions necessary to avoid the socially destructive forces of envy and for cultivating
appropriate relations of self-love and self-esteem? As weve noted, Rawls answer is
institutional: Rawls appeals to the basic structure of society precisely because of the
profound socializing capacity he sees it playing in social life, precisely because of
the profound eects it has on the values, choices, and motivations of aected
citizens. The rules of a just basic structure, in other words, cannot help but transform the psychology of individuals subject to those rules.64 The basic structure of a
just liberal society not only promotes egalitarian relations that minimize the
socially destructive force of envy, but it also promotes the necessary inter-subjective
conditions of equality necessary for the aective dispositions of proper self-respect
and self-esteem; after all, the latter rest on satisfying individual citizens desire for a
particular kind of recognition recognition as equals. Liberalism, on Rawls view,
therefore explicitly depends on the creation of institutions that satisfy fundamental
human desires most fundamentally our desire for recognition and respect. But it
is equally necessary that such institutions play a role in developing the aective
dispositions and attachments conducive to just and stable social cooperation. This
highlights the sense in which Rawls project describes an ongoing historical process,
a process by which liberal institutions and liberal citizens are mutually transformed, with the latter developing what we might call a liberal character or
ethos of justice.

A liberal soul-craft?
Our reconstruction of Rawls political project, pace prevalent although ultimately
misleading readings, is now complete. As we have shown, aect does have a central, fundamental, and yet unappreciated place in Rawls attempt to constitute and
defend a liberal theory of justice. The emotions are present in Rawls thought from
the very beginning, both in his account of the natural constellation of psychological
needs and in the role that the emotions must play in the articulation of justice
principles and in the institutional arrangements characteristic of a just liberal order.
In the end, Rawls does have a rather capacious understanding of the self, and he
does see that such an understanding is an essential element in the articulation of
any compelling theory of justice.
We must concede, however, that there are deep tensions within Rawls project
and that Rawls incorporation of aect into his understanding of the liberal subject
is far from uncomplicated. Although here we can only do so in a cursory manner,
by way of conclusion we wish to draw attention to some of these potential issues.
For one, Rawls incorporation of the emotions into his account of liberal justice
certainly must trouble our understanding of Rawls as a key representative of

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traditional liberal, and especially Kantian inspired, visions of autonomy. As we

have shown, Rawls anchors his account of liberal society in an inter-subjectively
and aectively constituted conception of the self, as signalled in his self-avowed
departure from the (purportedly) Kantian conception of the person. The individual
can no longer rightly be conceptualized as the purely rational, unencumbered
chooser of ends; citizens ends (and the value systems used to evaluate and
choose those ends) must now be thought of as fundamentally constituted by
their institutional milieu. All of this suggests that we must dispense with the
image of the original position as capturing Rawls conception of the autonomous
self. Instead, Rawls follows Rousseau and Hegel: he views autonomy as an accomplishment, the contingent by-product of institutional circumstances that are themselves part of a larger historical process.
What is more, this suggests that the general liberal repugnance towards soulcraft simply isnt present in Rawls: he clearly recognizes that institutions cannot
avoid having a decisive eect upon our moral and emotional development as individuals and as citizens. Indeed, this is precisely why the basic structure must be
governed by principles of justice: the basic structure of a just society not only
facilitates self-development; liberal institutions also determine the nature of selfdevelopment. Liberalism is therefore fundamentally implicated in the cultivation of
a liberal character or ethos. Of course, this puts Rawls in tension with the liberal
aspiration to neutrality, and may demand that we move away from the typical
liberal aversion to viewing political life as always already implicated in the project
of character formation. And given the centrality of the ideas of impartiality and
neutrality between completing conceptions of the good in the later iteration of
justice as fairness, political liberalism, our view raises potential questions about
the coherence of Rawls later political philosophy.
However, it is only once we rst acknowledge the place of aect in Rawls
thought that we can begin to grapple with these matters. Far from banishing the
emotions from the domain of politics, Rawls account of liberalism seeks to harness
these embodied aspects of liberal citizens to bring about and sustain the stability of
just liberal institutions. And while we may ultimately nd ourselves dissenting from
the vision of an aective economy that emerges in Rawls project, with its implications of a distinctively liberal soul-craft, surely the starting point for such an
evaluation must be a serious reckoning with the place of the emotions in his
thought. Moreover, while recognizing this dimension of Rawls project does raise
deeper questions, it is worth considering that often the hallmark of a great
thinker consists in part in these very tensions and ambiguities. Indeed, when
read in this light, Rawls can be seen as representative of the complicated and
ongoing engagement of liberal theory with the question of the place of the emotions
in political life.
Acknowledgements
A special thanks in particular to the Graduate Associates of the University of Torontos
Centre for Ethics for their constructive comments an earlier version of the project. We would
like to thank the many members of the University of Toronto theory community who

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generously oered comments and suggestions on this piece. All errors and omissions remain
strictly the responsibility of the authors.

Notes
1. There has been an outpouring of material that has sought to highlight the important
place of affect in political life and political theorizing. See Cheryl Hall (2005) The
Trouble With Passion: Political Theory Beyond the Reign of Reason. New York, NY:
Routledge. Michael Walzer (2006) Politics and Passion: Toward a More Egalitarian
Liberalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Rebecca Kingston and Leonard
Ferry (eds) (2008) Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy.
Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Sharon R. Krause (2008) Civil
Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press. Michael L. Frazer (2010) The Enlightenment of Sympathy: Justice
and the Moral Sentiments in the Eighteenth Century and Today. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. Martha C. Nussbaum. (2013) Political Emotions: Why Love Matters
for Justice. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
2. See Robert C. Solomon (1995) A Passion for Justice: Emotions and the Origins of the
Social Contract. Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield. Cheryl Hall (2002) Passions and
Constraint: The Marginalization of Passion in Liberal Political Theory, Philosophy
and Social Criticism 28: 72748. Michael Walzer (2002) Passion and Politics,
Philosophy and Social Criticism 28: 61733. More recently, scholars writing in the
self-described school of realists have levelled a similar criticism at liberal theory; see:
W. A. Galston (2010) Realism in political theory, European Journal of Political Theory
9: 385411; W. A. Galston (2009) Realism and Moralism in Political Theory: The
Legacies of John Rawls in Reflections on Rawls: An Assessment of his Legacy, pp.
11129. Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
3. Solomon (1995, in n. 2), p. 300. Solomon goes so far as to interpret Rawls apparent
invocations of the moral sentiments as merely cosmetic plaster that [Rawls] adds
between the structural struts to give his deductive theory some sense of humanity.
See also Michael Sandel (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Michael Sandel (1984) The Procedural Republic and the
Unencumbered Self, Political Theory 12: 8196. Susan Moller Okin (1989) Reason and
Feeling in Thinking About Justice, Ethics 99: 22949. Brian Barry (1995) John Rawls
and the Search for Stability, Ethics 105: 874915. Simon Blackburn (1998) Ruling
Passions. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Philip Fisher (2003) The Vehement Passions.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
4. John Rawls (1971) A Theory of Justice, p. 11. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
5. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 52.
6. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 16.
7. James Fishkin (1975) Justice and Rationality: Some Objections to the Central
Argument in Rawls Theory, American Political Science Review 69: 61529. John
Harsanyani (1975) Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Suitable Basis for
Morality? A Critique of John Rawls Theory, American Political Science Review 69:
594606. Allen Buchanan, A Critical Introduction to Rawls Theory of Justice in H.G.
Blocker and E. H. Smith (eds) (1982) John Rawls Theory of Social Justice: An
Introduction, pp. 541. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
8. Robert Nozick (1974) Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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9. Sandel (1982, in n. 3), ch. 4.

10. Susan Moller Okin (1987) Justice and Gender, Philosophy and Public Affairs 16: 4272.
Iris Marion Young (1990) Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton, NJ. Princeton
University Press. Amy R. Baehr (1996) Toward a New Feminist Liberalism: Okin,
Rawls, and Habermas, Hypatia 11: 4966.
11. Okin (1989, in n. 3), p. 234.
12. G.A. Cohen, Incentives, Inequality, and Community in G.B. Peterson (ed.) (1992) The
Tanner Lectures on Human Values, pp. 262329. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah
Press. G.A. Cohen (1997) Where the Action Is: On the Site of Distributive Justice,
Philosophy and Public Affairs 26: 330. G.A. Cohen (2008) Rescuing Justice and
Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
13. Galston (2009, in n. 2).
14. Galston (2010, in n. 2), p. 124, p. 398.
15. See Martha C. Nussbaum, Rawls and Feminism in Samuel Freeman (ed.) (2002) The
Cambridge Companion to Rawls, pp. 488520. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
16. Sharon Krause (2005) Desiring Justice: Motivation and Justification in Rawls and
Habermas, Contemporary Political Theory 4: 36385. Michael Frazer (2007) John
Rawls: Between Two Enlightenments, Political Theory 35: 75680. More recently, in
a manner that parallels that of Krause and Frazer, Martha Nussbaum (2013, in n. 1) has
also drawn attention to the motivational role of the emotions in Rawls project as part
of developing her own novel account of the political role of emotions.
17. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 403.
18. Frazer (2007, in n. 16), p. 761. See also David Hume (2000) A Treatise of Human Nature,
173940, p. 395. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
19. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 44, 507.
20. Frazer (2007, in n. 16), p. 768.
21. Krause (2005, in n. 16), p. 366.
22. Krause (2005, in n. 16), p. 364, 367.
23. Hume (2000, in n. 18), p. 317. Another important merit of both Frazers and Krauses
articles is that they highlight Rawls unrecognized debt to the Scottish Enlightenment
despite its association with the kind of utilitarian politics that justice as fairness was
designed to rebut. In the end, as we emphasize below, justice as fairness is thought of by
Rawls himself as a theory of the moral sentiments, which clearly evokes its 18th-century
Scottish heritage. See Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 51.
24. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), pp. 4778.
25. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 51.
26. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 454.
27. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 176.
28. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 177.
29. John Rawls (1993) Political Liberalism, p. xvii. New York, NY: Columbia University
Press.
30. Rawls (1993, in n. 29), pp. 1115, 14050.
31. See e.g. Ronald Beiner (2010) Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political
Philosophy, ch. 23. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
32. See Frazer (2007, in n. 16), pp. 72274. Krause (2005, in n. 16), pp. 3701.
33. Rawls indebtedness to both Rousseau and Hegel is far greater than is generally
acknowledged in the literature. Here we must limit our discussion of these influences
to how they bear on how we should understand the place of affect and the emotions in
Rawls project. However, for a more direct consideration of the extra-Kantian aspects of

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34.
35.

36.
37.

38.
39.

40.

41.
42.
43.

44.
45.
46.

47.

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Rawls work, see: Sibyl A. Schwarzenbach (1991) Rawls, Hegel, and communitarianism, Political Theory 19: 53971. For a broader and more extensive discussion of the
important and under-appreciated Hegelian and Rousseauvian strands in justice as fairness and of the implications of this for understanding Rawls thought, see: Jeffrey
Bercuson (2014) John Rawls and the History of Political Thought: The Rousseauvian
and Hegelian Heritage of Justice as Fairness. New York, NY: Routledge, especially
Ch. 34.
See esp. Sandel (1982 and 1984, in n. 3).
John Rawls, Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory in Samuel Freeman (ed.) (1999)
Collected Papers, p. 339. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. John Rawls (2000)
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, p. 204. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Rawls (1999, in n. 35), p. 339.
See e.g. Rawls (1999, in n. 35), pp. 1478, 263, 273, 299. Of course, this claim will give
many readers pause: Kant does have a well-developed political philosophy, one that
grows organically out of his moral theory. But Kants interest in political questions
receives very little attention in Rawls Lectures: of the 10 lectures devoted to Kant in
Rawls Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, which total 186 pages, the political
essays receive attention in only two sections (X.3 and X.5). Together, these two sections total approximately three pages.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 366.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 366. See also Rawls (1999, in n. 35), p. 304 (italics added): In
elaborating his moral theory along somewhat Hegelian lines, Dewey opposes Kant,
sometimes quite explicitly, and often at the same places at which justice as fairness
also departs from Kant. Thus there are a number of important affinities between justice
as fairness and Deweys moral theory which are explained by the common aim of
overcoming the dualisms in Kants doctrine.
Of course, Rawls reading of Kant may itself miss the affinities between his sensibilities
and Kants, as the growing critical literature on the embodied dimensions of Kantian
moral judgment and Kants so-called impure ethics would seem to suggest. But this
potential interpretive myopia on Rawls part need not detract from our account of his
position. See Onora ONeill (1990) Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kants
Practical Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Barbara Herman
(1996) The Practice of Moral Judgment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Robert B. Louden (2002) Kants Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 330.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 330.
G.W.F. Hegel (1991) Elements of the Philosophy of Right, trans. A.W. Wood, 28, 30,
3945, 77, 147, and 265A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See also Rawls
(2000, in n. 35), pp. 189, 2637, 299301.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 331.
Samuel Freeman, Introduction in Samuel Freeman (ed.) (2002) The Cambridge
Companion to Rawls, p. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rawls (1993, in n. 29), I.7.1. See also John Rawls, The Idea of Public Reason
Revisited in The Law of Peoples, pp. 12980. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press. John Rawls (2001) Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, 55.2. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Rawls (2000, in n. 35), p. 326.

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48. Charles Taylor (1979) Hegel and Modern Society, p. 84. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
49. For the most bold articulation of this problematic interpretation of the original position
as expressing a philosophical anthropology see Sandel (1984, in n. 3), p. 50. Yet Rawls
(1993, in n. 29), p. 27, insists that Sandels interpretation is deeply mistaken, a product of
an illusion caused by not seeing the original position as a device of representation. See
Amartya Sen (2009) The Idea of Justice, pp. 56, 60, 69, 79. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. See also Rawls (1993, in n. 29), 7.2, 8.2, 9.1, 11.3 and 23.4 and
Rawls (2001, in n. 46), 7.2, 8.2, 9.1, 11.3 and 23.4. Here, we encounter another
important Hegelian moment in Rawls thought: the role of political philosophy, according to Rawls (1999, in n. 35), p. 306, is to reconcile us to our prevailing institutional milieu
to articulate and to make explicit those shared notions and principles thought to be
already latent in common sense [. . .] [philosophy] must discover and formulate the deeper
bases of agreement which one hopes are embedded in common sense. For the Hegelian
notion of philosophy as reconciliation, see Rawls (2000, in n. 35), pp. 3316.
50. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 386.
51. See e.g. John Rawls (2007) Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, p. 234, 2478.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
52. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 386.
53. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), pp. 46971, 478.
54. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 477.
55. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), 15.
56. See e.g. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract in Victor Gourevitch (ed.) (1997)
Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Late Political Writings, p. 79. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. See also Rawls (2007, in n. 51), p. 199.
57. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 468.
58. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 466.
59. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 468.
60. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), 81.
61. Rawls (1971, in n. 4), p. 387.
62. The conspicuously (and yet underappreciated) historical orientation of Rawls thought
is well captured by the Introduction to Political Liberalism, which proposes a kind of
historical genealogy of liberal toleration. There, Rawls gives a more concrete expression
to the notion of the educative function of institutions: properly designed institutions
show the theologically inclined that a shared religious worldview is not a necessary prerequisite of civic co-existence (and perhaps even civic vitality). Institutions make potentially unreasonable doctrine-holders reasonable by showing over time that equal rights
and toleration are the only stable bases of civic association in a religiously plural community. But certainly this is not a necessary, causal relationship: the institutionalized
practice of toleration is not logically possible in the absence of a worldview that acknowledges the political manageability of religious diversity. Unreasonable religions must go
through a process of liberalization before political liberalism is possible; hence, the
existence, and operation, of a kind of institutional-behavioural dialectic in Rawls work:
institutions educate, but citizens must be open to such processes of socialization.
According to our argument, there is a similar logic at work when it comes to the question of self-respect. See also Beiner (2010, in n. 31).
63. And Rawls goes even further: peoples also have a constitutive interest in recognition and
self-respect. In other words, Rawls is concerned not only with the cultivation of the
affective resources necessary to proper self-respect and esteem between liberal citizens

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but he is also concerned with the affective orientation of peoples. That this is the case is
revealed even more clearly in The Law of Peoples, where Rawls explicitly draws on the
Rousseauian language of amour-propre, understood as the proper self-respect of peoples. John Rawls (1999) The Law of Peoples, p. 34. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
64. For this reason, G.A. Cohens critique of Rawls misses the mark (see n. 12). The project
of TJ, and Rawls more generally, is attentive to the place of an ethos of justice in a wellordered society, although the contours of that ethos may not quite conform to Cohens
expectations. For an excellent discussion of what a Rawlsian ethos ought to resemble,
and why it would most likely not be compatible with the radical egalitarianism of
Cohen, see Michael Titelbaum (2008) What Would a Rawlsian Ethos of Justice
Look Like?, Philosophy and Public Affairs 36: 289322.

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